


apples grow too in my garden

by orphan_account



Series: Timer AU [1]
Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Timers, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-05
Updated: 2014-05-05
Packaged: 2018-01-22 01:12:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 29,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1570466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(AU based on the movie TiMER. A timer is a digital clock on your wrist that counts down the time until you meet your soulmate. Please heed the tags, although there is a resolution and I don't think it's totally miserable! But if you don't like potentially sad endings, y'all, SNAKE HABITAT, TURN AROUND.)</p><p>Every once in a while, mostly when he can’t sleep, Louis lets himself lie in bed and think about his One. She’s always backlit like aliens are when they come off the spaceship for the first time; Louis supposes this is because he can’t imagine her being real and out there and living her life—it seems likelier that she’d drop in out of the sky. Sometimes he can catch the curve of her jaw, the edge of a smile. The closest he’s got to really picturing her is thinking that she’d have to be a little like Harry, transparent the way Harry is, seeing him with big clear eyes the way Harry does. Someone who can fill him up the same way.</p><p>He doesn’t think about her often.</p>
            </blockquote>





	apples grow too in my garden

The first time Louis meets Harry is in a bathroom.

Louis goes in to wash his face, try to get the hectic pink off his skin, but there’s someone else in already, leaning over the sink so Louis can’t see his face. Louis doesn’t recognize him, which is unusual; everyone in their year mostly knows each other by now, having been shuffled around together for the better part of eight years. The boy has a lot of curly brown hair, which falls almost over his eyes as he straightens up suddenly, having noticed Louis’s presence. He keeps his head down but Louis can see his face in the mirror now as he scrubs at his hands. Big eyes, downcast. A wide mouth and lanky shoulders. Expensive clothes, but too big for him, his polo shirt gaping open at the neck. He’s been crying or something, Louis sees, as the boy’s chest hitches silently.

All at once, finished washing his hands, the boy glances up into the mirror. His eyes are rimmed with pink, and he stares at Louis with a kind of babyish unselfconsciousness that makes Louis’s face burn harder. If Louis had been caught having a cry in the loo he’d have kept his eyes down and got out of there as fast as possible, but this kid doesn’t seem ashamed, just curious.

A fucking weirdo, Louis decides, and probably some sort of fresher. Louis is in his second-to-last year now and itching to practice his keeping-down-the-rabble skills.

“You’ve been crying,” Louis says, winking, ready to embarrass.

“A bit,” says the boy. His voice is deeper than Louis had expected, and he seems not embarrassed at all. He’s still staring. Perhaps Louis has misjudged him, and he’s just a badly dressed year twelve. No—Louis can see his wrist where he’s gripping the counter. He doesn’t have a timer yet. In the UK you can’t get a timer until you’re seventeen. Most get theirs at midnight on their birthdays.

Wrongfooted, Louis tries again. “I suppose you’re trying out for the play, then,” he says. “Nervous, are you?”

“Yes,” says the boy. “Are you?”

“No,” says Louis. “I’m never nervous.”

“Oh,” says the boy. “Well—you already know everyone, and that. I’m not—I’m new here. I’m Harry.” The boy wipes his right hand hastily on his oversized jeans and offers it to Louis.

“I’m Louis,” Louis says, shaking it. Damp, bigger than Louis’s. He can’t decide if he dislikes him or not, which is unusual. Louis is the king of snap judgments. On the one hand, it would be cool to be the first person to know the new kid, and to introduce him around. On the other, just as cool to be the first person to humiliate him publicly if he turns out to be a loser.

“Oh—is that your real name?” asks Harry, interrupting his thoughts.

“How d’you mean?” Louis says.

Harry turns pink. “I mean—I saw you around, on the first day, people called you Tommo.”

Louis puffs up a bit. “Yeah,” he says. “Last name’s Tomlinson. Sometimes people call me Tommo.”

“Should I call you Tommo, then?” asks Harry, turning away to un-muss his curls in the mirror, then glancing back at Louis with a kind of quick smoothness that Louis would call flirting if it were a girl doing it. Louis is caught off guard again; Harry seems to have totally forgotten that it was Louis who had found him sobbing like a primary schooler in the bathroom and, therefore, that he should be begging Louis not to tell the school, not—teasing him.

“No,” Louis says, too quickly. “You haven’t earned the right yet, you can call me Louis.”

“All right. Louis,” says Harry, turning from the mirror to lean against the counter. He has a weird accent and he speaks so slowly Louis can hear each syllable separately.

“Where are you from,” Louis says desperately. He needs something to make fun of.

“Cheshire,” Harry says, leaning closer.

“Rich boy,” says Louis, triumphant. “What are you doing up here?”

“Mum got a timer,” says Harry, tilting his head.

Louis knows what he means. The latest wave of people getting timers were olds who hadn’t got them the first time around, convinced they were full of shite, but a decade of their friends having better, timer-approved marriages had tempted the best of them, and now they were all getting divorced and chasing the late-in-life true-love dream. There was a television show about it now where people bet on whether long-married couples were actually each other’s soulmates or not. Mostly they weren’t. Louis is glad he hadn’t grown up then; imagine finding out you’d wasted half your life on some poor sod who wasn’t even your One.

Louis’s parents had got theirs when Louis was quite young and his dad had left on the spot. It was good riddance, as far as Louis is concerned; sure, Jay’s timer had told her she wouldn’t meet her One until she was forty-one, but at least she could plan for the future in the meantime, do what she wanted to do. She’s with Mark now. Both of them have long tickers, so neither of them will get their heart broken when it’s time to split up. Both of them had wanted lots of children while they were young, so it’s a good arrangement, and the kind of thing a lot of people did now.

“Got it,” says Louis, backing away. He hasn’t had the chance to put any water on his face and it’s still flushed. “D’you like the new guy?” That was a friends sort of question, he decides, regretting it. He’s lost the upper hand now.

“He’s all right,” Harry says, following Louis toward the door. “Hey. Louis, hey.”

“Hey, rich boy, hey,” Louis says.

Harry’s face twists in a half-scowl, half-smile. “I just wanted to say thank you, I mean. I’m not as nervous anymore.”

“Glad I could help,” says Louis, meaning it to come out sarcastic, but he fudges the delivery and Harry winds up dimpling at him. Louis wants to pound his head against the door, but he settles for opening it as fast as he can and darting outside, into the line to try out for Danny Zuko.

He’s breathing hard, flipping through his script, when a low voice in his ear says, “Hey.”

Louis drops his script.

Harry laughs and Louis turns around.

“No,” he says, retrieving his script. “You can’t try out for Zuko. Look at you, you’re as soft as they come.” His gesture tries to encompass all the—curls, and dimples, and big green eyes and so on.

“It’s a soft role,” says Harry, not looking ashamed of any of the above. “He falls in love and everything.”

“You can’t try out for Zuko because _I’m_ trying out for Zuko,” Louis clarifies.

“You’re too short to be Zuko,” Harry says.

Louis almost drops his script again. Niall, who’s just appeared at Louis’s shoulder, doubles over laughing, sticking out a hand to shake Harry’s.

“I don’t care who you are, mate,” he says, straightening, as Harry tries to introduce himself. “We’re going to be friends anyway, you make Tommo look like that.”

Louis is about to respond when Harry’s name is called.

“Got to go,” says Harry, smiling at Louis and Niall. “Nice to meet you.”

“Terrible to meet you,” says Louis, “please leave us,” but Harry’s dimpling again anyway, stumbling off toward the stage doors.

“Fuck off,” says Louis to Niall, who’s still laughing.

“I wasn’t going to take the piss before,” says Niall, suddenly serious, “but now I absolutely am, so. Good job shooting yourself in the foot with that one.” He doubles over laughing again.

“Yes,” says Louis, resigned. It’s what Louis would do, after all.

 

 

 

Louis doesn’t get Zuko. Zayn Malik gets Zuko, which is shit. Louis is ten times more talented than someone like Malik, for fuck’s sake, _and_ he had actually practiced for this one, like run his lines with Lottie more than once and done moves in the mirror and that. He had actually wanted this role; he’s almost seventeen now and _Grease_ was going to be his introduction to the upperclassmen, so maybe he could pull with somebody he hadn’t known since primary school. Nobody cares who played Kenickie.

It was also, just a little bit, so that if he got his timer and it said soon, like during school soon—maybe it would have made him seem a bit cooler. He’d heard of things like that happening, like Gracie Vreeland a few years ahead of him who’d zeroed out with this pale, spotty loser in her maths class and refused to speak to him for the rest of their school time together, embarrassed that everybody knew she’d end up with him eventually, having his pale, spotty babies. At the moment, Louis is the clown, a loudmouth with bad marks whose picture of himself with a footie on his head from two years ago is still getting likes. Not someone whose babies you’d want to have, for sure. But if he’d been the lead in the play and people saw him being really good at something, maybe he’d have had a shot with somebody actually cool.

But that’s all shit now, because Zayn Malik had already owned a black leather jacket and had worn it to auditions, smoldered in it, and brought the house down.

It isn’t fair; Malik doesn’t need to be Danny Zuko. He’s already cool; aside from the leather jacket, he had once been suspended for smoking pot on school grounds and, better than that, he had gotten his timer three weeks ago, zeroed out, and _refused to tell anyone who his soulmate was._ He wasn’t embarrassed by them, he said. It just wasn’t anybody’s business.

Which is the coolest thing Louis has ever heard of, and also infuriating.

“Hiiii,” says someone from above him.

Louis groans and rolls over. He keeps rolling until he’s out from under the props table, covered in a thin layer of grime. It’s three weeks into production and tomorrow is Louis’s seventeenth birthday and everything about his life is basically covered in a thin layer of grime, so it seems appropriate.

Above him, Harry grins, dimples on display. “I got my wings!” he says.

Louis squints. A pair of big white wings wobble in the air just behind Harry’s shoulders. Harry is playing Teen Angel, which is another part of Louis’s life that is shit, because at least he could have got that part instead of Kenickie. No one cares about Kenickie, and then he would have had fewer lines to memorize, anyway.

“So you did,” Louis says eventually, getting to his feet and busying himself with brushing the dust off his trousers.

“Louis,” says Harry, very seriously. “What did one angel say to the other when he got his wings.”

“I can’t even imagine what,” Louis says.

“He said, ‘Don’t harp on about it!’” Harry waits too long for Louis to laugh and then ducks his head, pulling a moue.

“Oh my God,” says Louis. “You have a halo as well.”

“Yeah,” says Harry, reaching up to check that it’s on straight. “It’s rather tinsel-y, I thought? But I’ve never met an angel, so.” He adjusts the halo and frowns.

“D’you want to come to mine tonight?” Louis says. He doesn’t know why he says it. He hadn’t intended to invite Harry, but something about the way he speaks so slowly makes Louis’s mouth move faster than his brain, like he’s trying to compensate for Harry’s lethargy.

“Yes,” says Harry, without hesitating. “What for?”

“It’s my seventeenth,” Louis says. “Reckoned I’d have a lads’ night to celebrate. In case this is the last night before I’m tied down for good.”

“Yeah,” Harry says. “I’d love to.” There’s something weird in his smile now, but before Louis can annoy whatever it is out of him, he’s called to the stage to rehearse. It’s moot, anyway; Harry has already been tackled by Niall as Louis retreats past the motheaten school curtains, yelling as Niall gets a mouthful of white feathers. Louis feels strangely happier.

 

 

 

Lads’ night at Louis’s has historically meant Louis, Liam, and Niall locked in Louis’s room playing FIFA as two or three of Louis’s sisters try to beat the door down at intervals, but everyone’s being respectful of Louis’s space today, like he’s a time bomb. Jay puts the girls to bed early and then she and Mark retreat upstairs, telling Louis he has the downstairs to himself and not to wreck it and that they’ll be down at midnight for the big event. Mark works with the TiMER company, and he’s got one of the portables for Louis’s seventeenth for free.

At nine, Louis, Liam, and Niall are sat around the big television, playing FIFA. Harry’s late and Louis is thrumming with nerves. He shoves Niall’s shoulder, then digs his chin in where he shoved. “We should see what we can get Liam to eat from the kitchen,” Louis says into Niall’s ear. “Potatoes and those pepper things. The yellow peppers.”

“Banana peppers,” Liam says from Louis’s other side. “I’ve learnt my lesson, I won’t eat anything you touch. Don’t know where those hands have been, anyway.”

“Down his trousers,” Niall cackles. “Lonely an’ sad.”

“Not for long,” Louis says. “Could be Cheryl Cole I’m zeroing out with tomorrow.” Like a lot of celebrities, Cheryl Cole was a wristwatcher—she had a blank timer (or, at least, she wore one—plenty of celebrities wore fakes). This was rather romantic as well as convenient: you could feel sorry for her for not knowing when she’d meet her One, but you also had to forgive her any escapades in the meantime—she was only trying to live her life as best she could without the certain future luckier timered people had. Probably hundreds of people had got timers just hoping theirs was the one that would make Cheryl Cole’s timer finally start counting down.

“The worst day of Cheryl Cole’s life,” Liam cracks.

There’s a weird scuffling sound at the window, then a sharp rapping. Louis looks up. It’s Harry’s wide-eyed face in the window. He makes a “come here” motion and then bursts into inaudible giggles, disappearing from view.

“Harry Styles is in the hedges,” Louis says, unable to stop the grin on his face. “Come on, lads, let’s rescue him before the birds make a nest of his hair.”

Niall drops his controller and follows Louis to the door. Behind them, Liam swears with glee at having won the game.

Harry’s at the door when Louis opens it, his hands behind his back. He’s pink-cheeked and looking at Louis with a kind of manic expression. “Louis,” he says.

“Hi. Uh,” Louis says, having spotted the person standing behind Harry.

“Louis, I brought you something. For your birthday,” Harry says.

“I see that,” Louis says, as Zayn steps up behind Harry, still in his stupid fucking leather jacket. “Is this supposed to be a gift?”

Harry follows Louis’s gaze and lets out a laugh. “Oh! No, I brought Zayn, too. I hope that’s all right. I brought something else, though.”

“Hey, man!” Niall says to Zayn.

“Hey,” Zayn mumbles. Zayn is looking at Louis’s house like he’s afraid to go in in case the uncool rubs off. Louis hates him in his beautiful guts.

Harry pulls an enormous bottle of vodka out from behind his back. “Happy birthday!”

“Fuck yes,” whispers Niall.

Louis makes his mouth turn down. It’s difficult. “I dunno,” he says. “I suppose you can come in, then, if that’s all you’ve got.”

Harry’s eyebrows go uncertain for a moment, and Louis rolls his eyes and pulls Harry in by his shirtfront. “It’s brilliant,” he says. “Where did you even get it, you loser?”

“Zayn and I sold our bodies to a man at the shops,” Harry tells him in an undertone.

Louis laughs. “Come on,” he says, lowering his voice as well. “We can’t drink it in here. We’ll go outside, I know where. You can come as well, I suppose,” he says over his shoulder to Zayn, who is staring at the floor in the front hall.

“Let’s rouse David Beckham,” Niall says.

There’s a crashing from the kitchen that Louis assumes means either Liam’s in there or one of his sisters is trying to sneak a biscuit. He leads the lads through the house and pokes his head around the door.

Liam’s in there, holding half a mug. “I was trying to put my cup in the dishwasher,” he says sheepishly. “Sorry.”

“Ignore that now,” Louis says. “This is more important. You are going to come with us, we are going to go to the park, and we are all going to get very extremely drunk.”

“ _I’m_ not going to get drunk,” Liam says. “ _I’m_ going to—” He stops abruptly and there’s a second crash as he drops the other half of his mug.

“For God’s sake, you animal,” Louis says. “Your kidney is fine now, isn’t it? We are going to drag you—”

“You invited Zayn?” Liam asks, his voice cracking.

Louis glances behind him, where Zayn is looking past Niall and Harry’s shoulders with an expression on his face like he’s seen a ghost. “I’m sorry, mate,” Zayn practically whispers. “I didn’t know—I’ll go. I’m sorry.”

Louis looks between them, baffled. “Do you know each other?”

“No,” Zayn says, and bolts for the door.

Liam glances at the mug shards on the floor and then back to where Zayn had been, torn. “I’ll clean them up,” he says at last, and goes after Zayn.

“Oh, no,” Harry says, pressing both hands to his face. “I’m so stupid.” It takes about an age for him to get all the words out.

“I have no idea what just happened,” Louis says, basically to the air.

Niall puts an arm around his shoulders. “Liam is Zayn’s One, yeah?”

“I didn’t knoooow,” Harry moans, sitting down on the floor, then yanking himself back to his feet. “I should go after them!”

“I don’t think that’s a great idea,” Niall says. “It seems pretty personal to them, eh?”

“How do you know?” Louis demands of Niall.

“I surmised, mate,” Niall says, shrugging.

“You worked all that out just from that?” Louis asks, gesturing at the kitchen where Liam and Zayn had been.

“I’m actually very clever,” Niall mumbles. “I just don’t tell you everything I think.”

“He lied to us,” Louis marvels. He’s almost impressed; Liam is an awful liar. “He said his dad wouldn’t let him get one till he was eighteen … _Liam_ is the one that Zayn won’t—I can’t believe he didn’t tell us he got a timer! I can’t believe he didn’t tell us he zeroed out with a _bloke_ ,” Louis blurts, this thought occurring on the heels of the last one. “Did he think we’d mind very much? I’ll hit him if he did—shit! His—oh, shit, his dad…”

Niall nods.

“You thought of that already,” Louis says.

“Liam’s dad?” Harry asks.

“He’s a conservative guy, innit,” Niall says.

At that moment, Liam comes back into the hallway, Zayn trailing behind him. They’ve both got their hands in their pockets, looking wary.

“Zayn’s staying,” Liam announces firmly.

“Zayn?” says Harry.

Zayn looks up and pulls his collar up, shrugging his shoulders. “I guess,” he says. He’s smiling a little, although it disappears when Liam glances back at him.

“I don’t know what you thought you were doing,” Louis says to Liam, whose expression gets stormy. “But it’s not going to get you out of celebrating my birthday, drunk, like a normal person,” he continues, and Liam looks so relieved Louis could cry. But he won’t, because he is seventeen and a man. “Onward!” he whisper-yells, and slings an arm around Liam and Niall each, pulling them clumsily out the back door.

 

 

 

Two and a bit hours later, they’re all sprawled on the children’s playground behind Louis’s house. Niall’s cheeks are a fiery red, and Harry’s face is rather pink as well. Louis is perched at the end of the miniature slide, clutching the vodka bottle between his thighs. It had purported to taste like apples, but it’s really only in the last half hour that it’s had any apple taste at all. False advertising.

“False advertising,” Louis says.

“What?” Harry asks. He’s on the sand next to the slide, flat on his back, making sand angels. Louis can see his pale belly where his shirt rides up.

“I can’t feel my feet,” Louis clarifies.

Harry grabs his ankle. “I can feel your feet,” he says.

“That’s all right then,” Louis says, taking his ankle back.

“Whose turn is it?” asks Niall.

“Are we keeping track anymore?” Zayn asks.

“ _Yes_ ,” says Louis, outraged. “It’s my party and we’ll play the game right if I say. It’s Liam’s turn.”

“Niall,” says Liam. He’s hanging from the jungle gym. Apparently alcohol makes him a terrible show-off, trying to accomplish feats of physicality on the kiddie bars. Louis should never have given it to him.

“Dare,” says Niall.

“You always pick dare,” says Harry.

“I’m not afraid of anything,” shrugs Niall.

“You’re afraid of the truth!” Louis sings.

“I’m not afraid of your nonsense, either, Louis,” says Niall, affecting Louis’s accent. “Dare me,” he adds, to Liam.

Liam furrows his face in concentration. “I’ve got it,” he says at last. “Lick the sand.”

Everyone groans. “That’s a shit dare,” Louis says.

“It’s my dare,” Liam says stubbornly. “It’s what I dared him to do and now he’s got to do it.”

Zayn leans over to Liam from where he’s been sitting on one of the swings and whispers something in his ear.

“That’s cheating,” says Harry, from the ground.

Liam’s face lifts. “Yes,” he says. “I’m extending my dare. You have to hold the sand in your mouth for thirty seconds.”

“Zayn, you wanker,” says Niall.

“It is a _better_ dare, at least,” Louis admits.

Niall swears and bends down to lick the sandy ground. He straightens up and shows everyone his newly disgusting tongue in the dim light of the streetlamp before closing his mouth with a grimace.

“One,” says Liam. “Two. Three.”

They count down for Niall until, at the thirty-second mark, he takes a great flourishing bow and then splutters, letting gobs of spit drip from his lower lip while they guffaw. At last Louis hands the vodka bottle over to Niall, who uses it to swish the last bit of grit out of his mouth. “Weak, Payne,” he says, when he can speak.

“Weak?” Liam demands, but Louis talks over him, telling Niall it’s his turn now.

“I choose Harry,” Niall says.

“Truth,” Harry says without opening his eyes.

“I know about the rest of yous’s virtues, but how about yours? Anyone tapped that yet?” Niall asks.

Louis kicks Harry in the ribs and Harry squeaks. “Look at our little teen angel,” Louis says. “So young, timerless, even. Pure as the driven snow.”

Zayn giggles from the swingset. Harry props his head up and glares at Zayn, then gives Louis a sweet smile. “I’m very pure,” he says. “But also, many have tapped this, and many wish they could.”

Louis fake gasps. “I’m shocked,” he says. “The illusion is ruined for me. We’ll have to take you out of the play. How many have plowed your virgin fields?”

“It’s not your turn to ask truth,” Harry says. “Louiiiis.”

“What?”

Everyone laughs. “I’m picking you,” says Harry slowly. “Truth. Dare.”

“Dare,” says Louis.

“I dare you to tell us how many have plowed _your_ virgin fields,” Harry says.

“Just Niall,” says Louis, batting his eyelashes in Niall’s direction.

Harry laughs. “Really, dare, though,” he says.

“Two,” says Louis. The real answer is one, a girl he knows called Sarah, and it was for about three seconds, so he doesn’t know if that counts. “Zayn, truth or dare?”

“Dare,” says Zayn laconically.

“I dare you to ask Harry how many girls he’s shagged,” Louis says.

“Harry,” calls Zayn, his voice light. “How many’ve you shagged?”

“Girls?” says Harry, pretending to think about it. “Five.”

Everyone but Zayn seems impressed. Liam falls off the jungle gym. He brushes himself off, and then, in the silence brought on by Harry’s answer, ventures, in a low voice, “Have you shagged a bloke, then?” Everyone looks at Liam, and he mumbles, “He said girls like it was—”

“Two,” says Harry, sitting up slowly and looking Liam in the eye.

“Nice,” says Niall, clapping Harry on the shoulder.

“Liam,” says Harry. “I dare you to kiss Zayn.”

Liam looks panicked and angles backward like he might run for the safety of the jungle gym again. “But I can’t—you didn’t give me a chance to pick—there might be people out here.”

“You don’t have to,” says Zayn. He flicks a glance at Harry. “Mate—”

“No,” says Liam. “It’s not that—” He stops himself and takes a huge breath. Then he marches over to where Zayn is sitting on the swing, drops to one knee, glances left and right to check for passersby, and then takes one of Zayn’s hands into both of his. He looks up at Zayn and kisses his knuckles, gently.

Niall whistles.

“What a gennelman,” Louis smarms.

“That was sweet, but it wasn’t what I meant,” Harry murmurs.

Zayn says, “Shut up,” in a very low voice. “Thank you, Liam,” he adds.

“You’re, uh, you’re welcome,” says Liam. He gathers himself and gets up, then collapses into a swing beside Zayn. “Harry,” he says at last. “Now you’ve made me do it, you’ve got to kiss a boy.”

“Share your experience,” Zayn says, grinning. “Don’t be selfish with that knowledge.”

Harry shows him two fingers and then, before Louis can catch his bearings, Harry’s swung round and pressed his mouth to Louis’s. This makes Harry the fourth person Louis’s ever kissed, which is weird, but weirder is that he’s also the best at it by far; Louis’s never really got kissing except as a stopover distraction on the way to getting into a girl’s knickers, but this is like its own thing, making his whole body heat up, and Harry’s barely even touching him, has the tips of his fingers against Louis’s jaw, but that’s it, and Louis’s being properly snogged before he can really think about it, Harry’s mouth wet against his. Harry slips his hand around to the back of Louis’s head, fingers in his hair, and Louis’s just hanging there, arms useless, too surprised to do anything but let Harry kiss him. His eyes are still open and he can see that Harry’s are closed, lashes barely there in the shadow of his face under the streetlight, and Louis feels lights go off in his head like he’s getting high, and he can smell Harry, which is the weirdest thing, a very soap sort of thing happening, but also socks, and he’s never tried to smell a boy before but he’s not _not_ into it, and he wonders if this is how it started with Harry’s Two, the blokes he’s apparently had sex with, if he kissed them like this and then they—? All at once it’s over, having lasted perhaps six seconds, and Harry’s pulling back and grinning at him with his mouth which just kissed Louis’s mouth.

Louis ought to say something now that will defuse the situation and make him appear less of a fuckwit, probably. Niall is clapping and Harry is taking a bow. Liam is staring at Harry with his mouth open a little and Zayn is ducking his head, laughing under his breath. “Payno!” Louis blurts. “Obviously, the worst at dares. It’s no hardship to snog me, as everyone knows by looking at me.”

“You’re very beautiful, mate,” Zayne puts in, smirking.

Louis decides Zayn might not deserve his eternal hatred, which was unsustainable anyway as he’s apparently destined to shack up with Louis’s best friend. “Keep it in your trousers” is what he says, but he tries to say it in a way that will make Zayn understand that it means he might not be eternally hated.

“Definitely not a hardship,” Harry says, throwing himself back down on the sand and smirking up at Louis.

Louis can’t tell if he’s taking the piss and it makes him itchy. He makes a show of checking his watch. “We’re going inside, you youthful slag,” he says. “Not all of us can get around like you. Me, I might be on one knee tomorrow. You’ll understand when you’re my age.”

“Harry’s seventeen,” says Niall.

Louis grabs Harry’s wrist and holds it up like a prizefighter. “He lied to you,” he says to Niall. “He’s not seventeen, he hasn’t got a timer.”

Harry jerks his wrist back, shaking his head so his curls fall over his eyes. “I don’t believe in timers,” he says.

“What do you mean you don’t believe in timers, are you forty?” Louis scoffs.

“No,” Harry says quietly. “I just don’t—they’re not for me. I don’t believe in them,” he repeats.

“But everyone’s got one,” Louis says, stupefied.

“Why?” Harry demands. He’s as animated as Louis has ever seen him, suddenly, scowling. “Do you even know why you want one? Have you even thought about it? It’s not as if it makes you instantly happy. Look at Zayn and Liam, are they—”

Liam stands up suddenly, looking like a deer in headlights. Zayn looks over at him, then at Harry, and snaps, “Shut up, Harry.”

“No!” Harry says, immediately contrite, scrambling to his feet. “I didn’t mean it like that. Zayn—Liam—”

“It’s fine, Harry,” Liam says. He looks too sober for the amount of alcohol Louis has forced him to consume. “I think I’m going to head home, actually, Ruth’s probably tired of covering for me.”

“I’ll walk you,” Zayn says right away.

“No,” says Liam. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.” He glances around. “Sorry for missing the moment, Louis. Happy birthday again. Bye, Niall.”

“Liam, I didn’t mean it like that,” Harry calls at Liam’s back, but Liam has already jumped the fence and headed for home.

Niall holds out his arms and Harry falls into them. “You’ll work it out, mate,” Niall says, clapping Harry on the back. “He knows you didn’t.”

“Well, I don’t,” says Zayn harshly. “That was a fucking arsehole thing to say, Harry. I’ll see you later. Sorry, Louis.” He heads for the fence as well.

“Uh,” says Louis. “Well. We should be getting back up there. It’s near midnight, Jay’ll start wondering.”

“I’m going to throw up,” Harry exclaims, and then he’s retching on the sand. Niall holds his curls out of the way.

“You go on ahead,” Niall says to Louis. “We’ll catch up.” He shoots Louis a thumbs-up.

Louis looks between Niall and Harry and rubs his face with one hand. “All right,” he says. “I’ll see you, uh, later. A timered lad!” Nobody laughs.

In the house, Louis practices for his acting career by doing a very good impression of a sober person, all the way up until Mark pulls the trigger on the timer gun and Louis begins to bleed, at which point he, too, vomits. It’s not until Jay has cleaned him up and got him upstairs, cursing at him all the way, that Louis realizes two things: Harry and Niall hadn’t come back to see him get timered, and his drunk brain hadn’t thought to check his timer yet. Louis peels a bit of the bandage back and then falls back into his bed, head spinning. He might throw up again.

His timer is blank. His One doesn’t have a timer. Maybe she’s incredibly old, Louis thinks. Maybe she’s a baby and Louis is destined to become some kind of Humbert Humbert. Maybe she’s a hipster, like Harry.

It’s shit. He falls asleep, newly seventeen, thinking over and over again: _this is shit, this is shit, this is shit._

 

 

 

Exactly three years later, Louis’s timer is still blank.

He checks it automatically every morning upon waking. Shut off alarm, hold wrist up to face. He almost doesn’t think about it anymore.

This morning he shuts off the alarm, holds up his wrist, and then nearly has an attack of nerves when he rolls over. Harry is lying next to him, sheet half-covering his very probably naked body, with an enormous hard-on tenting the sheets. Louis has to hit him over the head with a pillow.

“Aahhh,” says Harry, bringing an arm up to defend himself and letting the sheet fall further.

“It’s my _birthday_ ,” Louis says too loudly into Harry’s ear.

“Oh my God,” Harry moans into the pillow. “You’re like a horn, eh, the horn, for buses, your voice.”

“This is how you wake me up, you cretin,” Louis yells.

“I got in late,” Harry mumbles. “I was lonely and you looked lonely, so I …” He finally opens his eyes and sees what Louis is pointing to. Harry grins. “Early birthday gift.”

“Fuck _off_ ,” Louis says. “How was your birthday, Louis, oh, not bad, knob in the face on waking.”

“Many would envy you this knob,” Harry says, gesturing. His morning wood has impressive endurance, Louis notes.

“Tell it to Niall,” Louis says. “I’m going to work.”

“That was like, a single time,” Harry calls after him. “It’s weird of you to bring it up so often.”

“I hate you and I won’t bring you anything from work, I hope your hangover knobs you in the face,” Louis calls back.

Work is a café in town which Louis chose mainly for its proximity to the ratty flat they all share. He and the lads had moved in with Harry after graduating, sharing the enormous flat Harry was renting from his odd middle-aged friend Simon, with four of them going on to uni and Louis going on to avoid uni. He’s had a string of jobs since moving in, half of which sacked him, half of which he quit of his own accord, but the most recent gig is one he doesn’t mind so much—café during the day, nights free to play roadie for Harry’s friend’s band which doesn’t have a name yet. Louis gets shows for them where he’s working sometimes and helps with equipment, and they mostly pay him in weed, and sometimes in dinner at Fred’s mother’s house.

He pulls on his uniform without bothering to wash and heads to the kitchen, where Liam is doing push-ups in the middle of the floor.

“Good morning, Liam,” Louis says, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Shh,” says Liam, switching to one-handed pushups so he can put a finger over his lips. “Zayn’s asleep,” he explains in a whisper, nodding toward Zayn’s bedroom. Zayn and Liam, since they moved into the flat, basically only sleep in Zayn’s bed, but Liam continues to pay rent on his own separate bedroom within the flat for appearances, and “in case Zayn needs his space,” which to Louis’s knowledge has literally never occurred.

“Harry could compose, record, and perform an entire album of songs on the subject of Zayn whilst sitting on Zayn’s face and Zayn would not wake up,” Louis says, going over to the cabinet and rattling it a bit to make a point as he gets the bread out. “Why are you even in here doing pushups when you could be in there doing your staring bit, anyway?”

“I don’t stare,” says Liam.

Louis sets the toaster and goes over to drape himself dramatically across Liam’s sweaty back, sticking his face right up against Liam’s face. “I don’t stare,” he says in a fantastic impression of Liam. “This is just how close my face has to be to appreciate Zayn’s beauty.”

“Shove off,” Liam says, shrugging his shoulders until Louis collapses onto the floor. Liam rolls over onto his back and starts doing crunches. Louis remains on the floor next to him, contemplating the ceiling. After a minute, Liam grunts out, through his short breaths, “I’m going to tell my dad about us.”

Louis has a split second to think about how this is a bad idea, shot with his quick pride in Liam’s bravery, before he manages to say, “Finally you’re getting serious about our relationship, Liam.”

“Idiot,” says Liam, but at least he stops doing crunches and just lies down, chest heaving. The toast pops up.

“It’s about time, anyway,” Louis says, getting to his feet and going for the toaster, “as I’m with child.”

“Get out,” Liam says, getting up as well and heading for the shower.  
  
“Your heir should know his grandparents!” Louis shrieks through a mouthful of toast, clutching his belly. Liam laughs as he’s going down the hall, and Louis dashes after him to grab his face and kiss his cheek like an old aunty before he goes back to the kitchen to finish his toast. It is actually a very big deal for Liam, but he doesn’t want to think about it as he’ll only worry, and maybe also because a part of him is bothered that Liam chose Louis’s birthday to have his big moment. Perhaps he forgot it was Louis’s birthday? Louis munches his toast, thinking. Either way, at some point Liam is going to get dye in his shampoo. Pink? Turquoise, perhaps.

Not tonight, though. Louis doesn’t want to ruin the moment.

 

 

 

The thing that Louis hasn’t told anyone is that as much as he likes pretending he’s never going to grow up, as much as he likes not going to uni and quitting jobs whenever he’s had enough and messing about with the band, he does actually think about the future sometimes. He has thoughts about it. And when they don’t make him feel like he’s going to vomit, they drive him to do this—stealing into the loo after work, pulling his cafe shirt over his head, changing into his other uniform. His audition uniform.

Acting is the only thing that Louis has ever felt he was any good at. He still remembers the shittiness of his seventeenth birthday, and how long the feeling had lingered after, until the night _Grease_ opened and he was on stage. It was the first time he had ever felt totally in control, not anxious or impatient or manic or mean. Louis was used since childhood to managing three or four trains of thought at once, each fused with their own panics and impulses, but on stage he experienced for the first time the relief of singular focus, a calmness he has never been able to replicate elsewhere. People laughed when he wanted them to laugh. _People laughed when he wanted them to laugh._ Sometimes when Louis was a kid he had thought that if he could choose a superpower, other than the clear winner which was flight, it would be to make people feel exactly what he wanted them to feel when he wanted them to feel it—like he’d wave his hand and they wouldn’t be sad anymore, kapow. On stage it was real.

He hasn’t told any of the lads. The other four have things they’re good at, direction in their lives, even if it’s not straightforward. Zayn has his face and his weirdly comprehensive arsenal of trivia on classic comic books, twentieth-century art history, and World War I. Harry has his singing voice and his odd duckfooted charisma which draws people to him so easily. Niall has never been to a place where he didn’t know at least nine people already, but Louis sees also the deep well of concentration in him that he seems to fall into so readily, helping Harry with chords or Zayn with the maths Zayn hates and Niall loves so much. Liam—Liam is the one Louis has known the longest and has the hardest time describing, but Louis thinks that Liam is the kindest person he knows. They seem to access happiness easily through these things, as if they were all born with the keys and Louis was left to snatch at it through other people, waiting for them to smile it into him.

So he hasn’t told them, and he won’t, not until he has something to show for it. He’s already their weird mate Louis who doesn’t go to uni and can’t hold a job; he doesn’t want to become their sad mate Louis who failed at being an actor.

The morning at the cafe had been long and somewhere around eleven a customer had grabbed Louis’s wrist and clucked loudly enough for the whole cafe to hear, so Louis is red-faced and tired as he buttons his shirt up to his neck and shoulders out of the toilets. He wishes he had showered before going to work. Or that he showered, ever.

On the tube a bloke in a suit gives Louis’s unshowered form a once-over. Louis can’t tell if he’s being eyed up or if he’s at the point now where strangers try to nonverbally communicate to him that he smells disgusting. He shrinks a little against the pole and the man pulls his eyes away from Louis, settling back in his seat.

The audition is in the back room of a second-rate theater company’s rented warehouse on the outskirts of the city. It’s not for anything special—probably it’ll be the millionth modern reinterpretation of _The Tempest_ to appear in London. Louis wants to talk to the other people waiting, but he’s afraid they’ll tell him they’re studying at LAMDA and just hanging out here for a laugh, so instead he folds his legs under him in the plastic chair and mentally assigns them all various weird sexual fetishes.

The woman who calls him in looks like his mum except with a wattle, and Louis tries to grin winningly at her as he slips through the door. The space is big, half-underground, with scratched-up wooden floors, and a little weak afternoon light spills in from the hodgepodge windows at ground level above his head. He almost tries to shake hands, but the woman with the wattle is already heading to sit behind a table next to another, older woman with dreads and too many scarves, so he settles for shoving his hands in his pockets and nodding inanely.

“I’m Louis,” he says at last. “So good to—ah, thank you so much, for letting me try out, this is lovely, here.”

“I’m Rosie, and this is Diane,” Rosie Dreads/Scarves says. When he doesn’t move, she says, “Whenever you’re ready, and after perhaps we’ll have you read from the script.”

“Sure,” says Louis. “Uh—sure.” He swallows and tries to remember himself as he is from the outside.

The monologue he’s prepared has no discernible effect on either of the theater ladies except to cause Diane to write something down at the end, missing Louis’s very poignant attempt at eye contact. Rosie murmurs something and then glances up at Louis, whose heart is still hammering. “Why don’t you try a bit of Ariel, then,” she says. “We’ve done a bit of reworking, so if you know it off by heart already here’s warning it’ll be new to you. Take the time to read it over, if you must.”

She hands him a sheet of paper and Louis frowns taking it; he’d been trying for Ferdinand. The Ariel monologue they’ve put together is disastrous; from what he can tell, having reread the play in one blurry go last night, they’ve replaced all the interesting and fun-to-say bits with “modern” slang which is still at least seven years out of date.

He takes a deep breath and struggles through it anyway, pacing from one side of the space to the other. He winds up delivering his last lines from a crouch, trying to make it as visually interesting as possible to make up for the script. By the end he’s sweated through his button-down and Diane smiles down at him without letting it reach her eyes. “Very nice,” she says. Rosie is frowning, staring at the page before her; when Louis hands back the sheet of paper he tries to subtly read her handwriting upside-down and catches “the top.” _Over the top_ , his brain supplies, and Louis swallows hard.

Rosie looks up and slides her hand over what she’s written. “We’ll be in touch, dear,” she tells him.

“Thank you,” Louis says, and leaves as quickly as he can.

 

 

 

By the time he’s home, Louis has talked himself all the way through despair into anger, and he’s jumpy with the need to be around people again, people who know that he’s funny and clever and _the fucking life of the party_ , and who won’t look at him the way that theater directors do, with that very specific sort of condescension. _Fuck you, fuck you_ , Louis hums on a loop as he unlocks the door to the flat.

His heart jumps when he sees the HAPPY BIRTHDAY sign strung up above the kitchen table (spray painted—Zayn) and the cake beneath it, missing a slice (Harry, with Niall’s help, apparently), but nobody yells surprise, and as he closes the door behind him he sees why. Liam is sitting on the couch, surrounded by plastic grocery bags, his face as pale as Louis has ever seen it, with Harry wrapped around him like a sloth. Niall is standing awkwardly to one side and Zayn is as far away as he can get, in one of the kitchen chairs, a hand fisted in his hair, which Louis has literally never seen him do before.

They all look up guiltily when the door clicks shut, and Louis feels an irrational surge of annoyance and frustration which dissipates immediately when Liam blurts, “Oh, Louis, I forgot about it, I’ll make it up to you, I swear—”

“Don’t talk nonsense,” Louis says, going to put his arms over Harry’s and nearly tripping over one of the bags on the floor. “What’s all this?”

Liam ducks his head and Niall says, “ ’s dad kicked him out the store.”

“Fuck,” says Louis. He tries to put as much of his body on Liam’s body as possible. Together, he and Harry will be like a human shield from the shit things of the world. “You took half the store with you, did you?”

“It’s all his stuff,” Zayn says from across the room, his jaw clenched. “His dad sacked him from the store, and cut him off from tuition, and then he told his mum to put all of Liam’s stuff that was still in the house into _grocery bags_ , and his mum _did it_.”

Louis feels Harry squeeze Liam a bit tighter, and Liam shakes him off. Harry blinks slowly, hurt, but Liam is sitting up straight. “Shut up, please,” Liam says to Zayn.

Louis’s mouth falls open. Liam has never said anything rude to Zayn, ever, that Louis knows of. Even when Zayn is not around, he won’t hear of anyone slagging him off even a little bit, even in jest, just gets that stupid proud look on his face and goes, _Ah, he’s got his ways_ , like a grandmother instead of a boyfriend, and now he’s telling Zayn to shut up, even if he has tacked a please on the end of it.

A split second passes. Zayn’s hair looks insane. Niall is biting his lip so hard Louis is a little worried he’ll draw blood, and Harry looks like he’s going to cry.

“Liam—” Louis tries.

“ _I’m allowed to be fucking upset, Liam_ ,” Zayn bursts out at the top of his lungs. They all stare. “I’m allowed to be fucking furious. I fucking want to murder him. I don’t understand—”

“He’s my dad!” Liam yells.

“I’m your One!” Zayn yells back. “I’m your person! It’s not as if tossing you out is going to change that! He made you feel like shit for something he knows by _definition_ you don’t have any control over! What is the fucking point of having one of these fucking things if they don’t fix this,” he says at last, slumping back into his seat and chafing at his wrists like they itch.

“I’m going out,” says Niall, wild-eyed, and slams out of the flat. Louis flinches after him, but doesn’t go; Niall hates conflict, but he’ll get over it, and maybe Louis can help more here.

“Zayn, I don’t think you should say anything else,” Louis says steadily, and Zayn jerks up out of his chair, crowding in on Louis.

“It’s none of your fucking business,” he hisses.

Louis shoves him back. “It’s my birthday, so you do as I say. Liam—” Zayn tries to interrupt, so Louis covers his mouth and wrestles him onto the sofa, continuing from atop Zayn’s chest— “Liam loves you and he did this for you, so you need to shut the fuck up about it.” Harry smooths Zayn’s hair away from his forehead and Zayn looks like he wants to bite him. Louis gets up close to Zayn’s face, keeping his hand pressed over Zayn’s mouth. “He’s my best mate and he did this for you and you’re making him sad, so apologize. Apologize,” he commands, lifting his hand.

Zayn coughs and squirms out from between Louis’s iron thighs. Liam is standing in the middle of the room, looking lost. Louis gives Zayn a shove in the middle of the back and Zayn stumbles toward Liam. They stare at each other for a long moment and then they’re kissing, Zayn pulling Liam to him. Liam breaks it off long enough to say, “I’m sorry,” and Zayn says “ _You’re_ sorry—” incredulously, before kissing him again.

Louis gives them both a salute and heads up the stairs to his room, but not before nicking the entire cake.

 

 

 

His mobile is on the floor on top of a pair of discarded trousers where he’d forgotten it that morning, and Louis picks it up and scrolls through a total of about eighty missed texts and Facebook/Twitter notifications wishing him happy birthday. There are a few missed calls, too, including two from his sister and three from his mum. He calls his mum back, finding a fork on the bedside table that looks relatively clean and sticking it into the middle of the cake as it rings.

“Louis!” His mother sounds breathless and there’s a lot of noise in the background; it must be near dinner or just after.

“Hi, Mum,” Louis says through a mouthful of cake.

“Happy birthday! Wait—” there are fumbling noises and her voice gets far away, and then Louis hears the twins yell _Happy birthday, Louis!_ in the background. Jay gets back on the line, cheering, and Louis grins despite himself. “How’s twenty for you? How’s London?” she asks.

Louis doesn’t answer right away, and he can feel her reaction—the background noise dies down, she must have shut the door on them. “Are you all right, sweet?” she asks, softer.

“Yeah,” he says, shaking it off. “It’s stupid. I had an audition today, but I shouldn’t’ve gone.”

“I’m sure you were fantastic,” she says.

“I _was_ fantastic,” he says, recalling a little of his anger from earlier. “It’s not my fault they can’t recognize the greats,” trying to joke himself out of it. “How many days is it now? Thirty-two?” He wonders why Mark hasn’t moved out yet. He would have, if it were him.

“Thirty-one,” Jay says. “But you can’t change the subject on me, now. I want to hear about your birthday plans. Did Eleanor set something up for you?”

“Ah—no,” Louis says. “We split, a while ago.”

“How long?” Jay demands. “I liked that girl.”

Louis digs into the cake. “I liked her too,” he says. “I liked her so much I wanted her to get a timer, so she went and got one.”

“Lou,” says Jay. Louis can picture what she looks like right now, the line between her eyebrows, and wishes suddenly that he were home.

“What’re you making for dinner?” he asks.

“Chicken and potatoes,” she says. “You ought to get Harry to take you out, at least. We love Harry.”

“We do love Harry,” agrees Louis, as Harry enters the room with perfect timing. He bounds off his bed and pinches Harry’s cheek, hard, as Harry bats at his hand and grins uncontrollably. “We love our Harold dearly. D’you know he made me a cake?”

“What kind?” Jay asks.

“Chocolate on chocolate, it’s delicious,” Louis tells her. Harry looks so pleased Louis is worried he’s about to sprain his face.

“Can I talk to Jay?” Harry asks in an undertone, so as not to interrupt.

“Is that Harry there?” Jay asks. “Put him on.”

Louis rolls his eyes and hands the mobile to Harry, who goes to sit cross-legged on the bed, already nodding at whatever Jay’s telling him.

When Harry gets off the phone, Louis has eaten a decent third of the cake Harry made him and gone through all his birthday congratulations on his laptop, and he falls back on the bed, clutching his stomach. “Ugh,” he says. Harry flops down next to him, and Louis sneezes as Harry’s curls get in his face.

“Sorry,” Harry says, and pets Louis’s stomach.

“You’re an odd child, aren’t you,” says Louis, pushing him away, but Harry only slides down the bed until his ear is pressed to Louis’s belly.

“I can hear the ocean,” Harry whispers. He looks up at Louis and grins. “There’s a storm coming.”

“Revolting,” Louis exclaims, pushing at his face. “How do you pull so much?” Harry has, to Louis’s knowledge, never gone a weekend in London without bringing someone new back to the flat. He seems to make friends by introducing himself dickfirst, which is a skill Louis envies, as he can’t imagine being friends with any of his exes.

“Dunno,” Harry says, shrugging and draping himself back over Louis like an octopus. There’s a silence, during which the sounds of Zayn and Liam fucking in the room directly below Louis’s slowly make themselves apparent. Louis makes a face and Harry makes one back at him. They have a making-faces contest for half a minute before Harry concedes and presses his forehead to Louis’s shoulder, giggling. “I was going to get the boys to take you out tonight,” he says at last, muffled.

“Yer a sweet lad, Harry Styles,” Louis says, sticking his upper lip to his gums and talking through his nose. “A sweeter lad there ne’er was!”

Harry wrinkles his nose. “We could still go out, if you want.”

“We might have to,” Louis says in his normal voice, as the fucking below them reaches a crescendo. Louis almost wishes he could hear them a bit clearer so he could make fun of Zayn for whatever he’s saying. “Are you ever jealous of them, like?” he asks Harry.

“Noooo,” Harry says slowly, blinking. “I dunno if—like, I’m glad I never got into a serious thing that young. But sometimes, I guess. It makes them nicer to each other than otherwise, I think, because they’re so sure it’s forever.”

“Are you not sure it’s forever?” Louis demands, propping his head up. “Excuse you. Liam and Zayn are going to get married and I’m going to be godfather to every single baby I can convince them to have.”

“I’ll be godfather,” Harry argues.

“You don’t know anything about babies,” Louis says. “You just think they’re _cute_.”

“They _are_ cute,” Harry says. “And I like, speak their language. You just change them and jiggle them about.” Over Louis’s squawks, he adds, “And anyway, I don’t think they’d split up, just that it makes them braver. Like tonight,” he says, quieter. “Like, I don’t really believe in timers, but like, they do, you know?” Harry’s wrist is near Louis’s face, and Louis lets his eyes flick over the tattoo there where a timer should be, the _I CAN’T CHANGE_ staring up. Harry’s never said it, but Louis has known him long enough now to make the connection between Harry’s parents’ situation and his opposition to timers.

“I do, too,” says Louis. “Mostly because of them.”

Harry shakes his head.

They’re quiet again on the bed. After a while, Louis asks, “Do you ever wonder which one takes it, you know—” and wiggles his finger.

Harry hits Louis open-palmed in the kidneys and covers his mouth as Louis folds in on himself, laughing. “I think they both do, idiot,” he says.

“I _know_ ,” says Louis, uncurling, “like, I _hear_ it, but I can’t picture it, like Zayn—well, I can’t picture Liam fucking anybody,” he muses. “It must be annoying to only have the one option.”

Harry hides his face in the pillow, laughing. “It’s not just the one option, dickhead,” he says when he surfaces. “There are quite a few options, you know.”

“And all of ’em so much work,” Louis says. “I dunno if I’d want to suck a cock every time someone sucked mine, just out of politeness.”

“It’s not work,” Harry answers, hitting Louis repeatedly with a pillow. Louis doesn’t bother to defend himself, as Harry’s missing half his attempts in a poor show of hand-eye coordination.

“Well, I wouldn’t know, would I,” says Louis in between blows. “I’m not like you and Niall, going down on my mates every time I get a bit buzzed.”

“For fuck’s sake,” says Harry, collapsing on top of Louis so that Louis wheezes out a breath—Harry’s actually gone and got quite heavy since they were teenagers, and most of it muscle from Liam’s constant prodding at him to go to the gym— “your obsession with the literal single time that Niall and I messed about—”

“It’s _weird_ ,” Louis insists, trying to sit up and failing.

“It’s _not_ weird,” Harry says. “I’ve messed about with almost all my friends except the ones in monogamous relationships, it doesn’t change anything, really.”

“Right,” says Louis, “all very platonic blowjobs.”

“ _Yes_ ,” says Harry.

“Like you could go down on me right now,” Louis says, “and in the morning it’d be all, Hello, Louis, how’s your morning, bring me a sandwich from the cafe, will you?”

“Yes. Do you want me to go down on you right now?” Harry asks. He’s about three inches from Louis’s face, and Louis suddenly gets an intense flashback to his seventeenth birthday, and the casual way Harry had kissed him, better than Louis had ever been kissed, then. He’s slept with a lot more people now—girls think the blank timer is tragic and sexy—but Harry has slept with at least three times more, and Louis finds himself wondering if he’s still the best at it. He gets a sudden rush of blood to his dick, and Harry’s eyes widen and Louis wants to die.

“It doesn’t mean anything,” he mumbles.

“Exactly,” Harry says, and slides his hand between them, unbuttoning Louis’s flies.

Louis throws an arm over his face. “Are you seriously going to suck me off right now to prove a point?” he says into his sleeve.

“Also because I want to,” Harry says easily, then stops what he’s doing and glances back up at Louis. “You want me to, right? I’ll, you know, I’ll stop. If you don’t.”

Louis lifts his arm up and glances at Harry’s pretty face, Harry’s pretty eyes, and remembers seeing him in the bathroom the first time, the babyish gaze, like Louis could go ahead and look right through him if he wanted. Harry’s mouth is slick where he licks his lips and Louis has a sudden urge to stick his fingers in it. Maybe to shut Harry up. “I don’t—I, uh—go right ahead, mate,” he mutters instead, and then has a quick moment of hysterical laughter, pressing his hands over his eyes. When he takes his hands away, Harry is smiling up at him, like this really is all a fun joke between mates, and maybe it is. It’s been a shit birthday so far, again, and what is a birthday other than a time people should suck your dick, after all.

Harry yanks Louis’s trousers down and presses his palm to Louis’s erection through his pants, and Louis gets disoriented when he realizes he can see straight down Harry’s loose top from this angle, except there’s just Harry’s familiar chest there, the tattooed swallows edging his collarbones, a couple of necklaces hanging down. Harry presses his mouth over the shape of Louis’s cock and breathes, eyes closed, and Louis gets harder from it, the dampness of Harry’s mouth almost there, but not quite, like Harry wants it so bad he can’t quite give it to himself yet. Part of him wants to squirm up the bed and part of him wants to shove his prick in Harry’s mouth until he chokes and coughs.

He doesn’t do any of that. He fists his hands in the duvet underneath him.

Harry slides his hand again over Louis and mouths over the fabric, waiting until Louis is struggling to keep still. Then he frees Louis’s cock and wraps his hand—so much bigger than Louis’s hand, so strange on Louis’s cock—and his mouth around in in one movement. Louis shuts his eyes and makes some kind of noise that makes Harry grin a little, and Louis can _feel_ that, and his hips jerk up of their own accord. Harry grunts and grips Louis’s hips in both hands, holding him down to the bed, and then Louis actually can’t move as Harry sinks all the way down on his cock.

A couple of girls have deep-throated Louis before, but not like this—Louis could see the struggle in it and was always a little afraid he was hurting them, but Harry seems totally calm, eyes closed and lashes dark against his cheeks. The only sign of effort is the low flutter of his throat against Louis’s cock in his mouth, and Louis suddenly sees Harry’s mouth stretched wide around him and it’s Harry who’s got Louis’s cock in his mouth, Harry who’s Louis’s best friend, and Louis’s brain tosses up the image of seventeen-year-old Harry from when they were in school, if Louis had backed him up against the wall and done this to him, to his pretty mouth, and he groans, clapping a hand over his mouth and jerking wildly under Harry’s hands.

Harry pulls off and his voice is different when he says, “You can, like—I’ll hold still.”

Louis stares at him, wide-eyed.

“I like it,” Harry says, dragging the back of his hand across his mouth. He catches Louis’s hand and threads it through his hair, and Louis lets it rest there, stunned, as Harry ducks his head and licks back down onto Louis’s prick.

Louis doesn’t move for a few seconds, feeling spit collect in Harry’s mouth and slide down, and then he grips Harry’s curls and shoves up into his throat. Harry’s face goes slack and he moans around Louis’s dick, letting Louis fuck his mouth like it’s his job. _It’s not work,_ Louis hears in his head, and he’s never had someone love it like this before, anyway.

He only gets a minute or two of staring, dazed, at Harry’s slick lips and broad shoulders, the way his arms are shaking holding him up over Louis’s cock, like he wants to give in and choke on it, before Louis has to look away, has to bite his lip, has to come.

In the instant he closes his eyes, he gets hit with the memory of what it was like, walking in on Harry leaning against the back wall of some dorm, Niall on his knees in the grass before him. He saw it from the side, no mistaking Harry’s dick disappearing into Niall’s mouth again and again, but what Louis remembers most is the way Harry’s back arched up off the brick and the slight turn of his head, the lights from the party reflected in his half-lidded eyes as he saw Louis see him, and then the quick resettling of his face, like a smirk, like he wanted Louis to see it, before Louis turned and fled.

Harry pulls off of Louis’s cock with a guttural noise and swallows several times, hard. Louis hears it and tries to look up, but he can’t; he’s flat on his back staring up at the ceiling, can’t move.

Harry falls next to him, leaving a few inches of space between them. “I bet you could get Liam a job at the café,” he says, after a minute.

“What?” asks Louis.

“Since his dad sacked him,” Harry explains.

“Uh,” says Louis. “Maybe?”

“So that’s good, then,” Harry says, satisfied. His voice is rougher than usual. Louis props himself up on one elbow and glances at Harry, his shirt rucked up practically to the butterfly tattoo, erection a thick line in his too-tight trousers. Harry catches him looking and gets smug, stretching a bit for Louis’s benefit, and Louis is grateful he’s too tired to blush.

Instead he fastens his trousers and rolls over on top of Harry, does what he’d wanted to do at the beginning, sliding his fingers into Harry’s open mouth. The smile fades and Harry just stares up at Louis, his tongue pushing tentatively against Louis’s fingers. “How long have you wanted to suck me off?” Louis demands, wanting Harry to squirm.

Harry does; he tries to answer, but his reply is lost with his mouth stuffed full. Louis pulls his fingers out, dragging the spit down Harry’s chin.

“Answer me,” he says.

Harry’s eyes are wide and green below Louis. “Since I met you,” he says, low.

Louis presses his hand against Harry’s erection through his trousers and Harry spreads his legs for him immediately. Louis feels lost with it all of a sudden, in danger of not being the one in charge of what’s happening. He catches Harry’s curls again in the other hand, yanks a little to see his face go slack like it had before. Then he drags his thumb all the way up Harry’s cock and lets go, getting off the bed and straightening his shirt.

“You did a good job,” he says, patting Harry’s cheek, and goes back downstairs.

Before he leaves, he gets one last look at Harry spread out on the bed, panting. Harry’s clothes are a mess, cock pressing painfully hard against his trousers, necklaces hopelessly twisted, and he looks at Louis disbelievingly before the door shuts.

When it does, Louis lets himself lean for a moment in the stairwell and have at maximum sixty seconds of a crisis of sexual orientation, and then he pushes off and goes to find out where Niall’s gone. He’s still got an hour left of his birthday, and he’s going to use it to get seriously fucked up.

 

 

 

The thing is, it’s not like Louis has never wanted Harry like that before. It’s not like it was totally out of the blue. It’s more Harry’s fault than Louis’s—Louis has seen fifty-year-old men visibly reconsider their marriage vows and sexual histories watching Harry sing with his band. He just has a thing about him, this steady, bubbling happiness that draws people to him, wanting to be the thing that makes him happy. It doesn’t hurt that he’s got the eyes and the hair and the tattoos as well. Harry has dated an impressive variety of people, and Louis thinks this is less about Harry’s preferences than about his unusually wide range of options. You look at Harry, at the way everybody else also looks at Harry, and you can’t help wanting him to look at you.

Louis has always felt that he’s got it worse than most people when it comes to Harry, though. Louis is a black pit of need when it comes to attention, the more people watching the better, but Harry is the only person he’s ever met who fills it all, whose focus on Louis is so complete that Louis’s whole body calms when he’s got it. Harry is not one of those people who won’t laugh at your jokes if he’s annoyed with you, or who pretends that he’s fine about the terrible thing you said when he’s not. He’s been unguarded since the beginning about everything, including that he thinks Louis is the funniest person in the world, and when Louis is around Harry he feels like he might be.

And it’s not as if he hasn’t thought about Harry in that way before. He hears it, sometimes, in their flat, although Harry is as polite about his pulling as he is about everything else and mostly keeps it down. But he hadn’t _seen_ it until two months ago, that summer party, when he’d stepped outside and caught Harry and Niall. It was stupid. The whole thing made him feel itchy. He hadn’t stopped feeling itchy until just a few hours ago, when Harry had—and now—

Every once in a while, mostly when he can’t sleep, Louis lets himself lie in bed and think about his One. She’s always backlit like aliens are when they come off the spaceship for the first time; Louis supposes this is because he can’t imagine her being real and out there and living her life—it seems likelier that she’d drop in out of the sky. Sometimes he can catch the curve of her jaw, the edge of a smile. The closest he’s got to really picturing her is thinking that she’d have to be a little like Harry, transparent the way Harry is, seeing him with big clear eyes the way Harry does. Someone who can fill him up the same way.

He doesn’t think about her often.

 

 

 

Louis wakes with a start, sitting up too fast and making his whole head pound. He’s lost for a moment until he realizes he’s on the couch, with Zayn staring at him from where he’s perched on the coffee table. Louis rubs his face and feels grooves in his cheek where the corduroy of the sofa has dug in.

“What time is it?” Louis rasps. “You’re up before me?”

“Half past noon,” Zayn says, nodding.

“Oh,” says Louis. The headache settles itself directly behind his eyeballs and it makes looking at things painful. Louis tries to stare at Zayn instead of the light coming through the window behind him. Yes. Looking at Zayn helps, he thinks. He does that instead of trying to speak any more.

After a long minute of surprisingly comfortable eye contact, Zayn says, “You know I love you, right?”

“Mm,” says Louis. Zayn looks very serious and Louis’s head hurts very much, so he doesn’t try to come up with a joke. “Yes,” he settles on.

“Good,” says Zayn. “I just wanted to thank you, like. For last night.”

Louis massages his forehead and gives Zayn a weak thumbs-up. Zayn slides forward on the coffee table and takes Louis’s face in his hands, giving him a gentle kiss on the forehead. Then he swings himself back onto the floor and leaves.

Louis decides that now, probably, is the moment he’s been waiting for to shower. He remembers when he’s halfway up the stairs that the paracetamol is in the kitchen, and almost goes back, but it’s too late and too far. This is just his life now, he decides, trying to assign a shape and color to the pulsing behind his eyes.

In the loo Louis finds two paracetamol, a bottle of water, and a towel, along with a note: _Crazy night ! Happy bday mate ! xxxx NIALL._ Louis says a brief prayer to the strange gods who created Niall Horan. It’s in the middle of swallowing that Louis remembers two a.m. and being deep in a conversation with Niall about Harry, Harry’s dick, and what gay really is, and he almost dies on the spot. It takes him almost a minute to stop coughing, and then he’s stripping off his clothes with unnecessary force, telling himself Niall is a mate, Niall left him paracetamol and a note before going to class, Niall is a good person who would never tell anyone stories about Louis’s sex life. Probably. Potentially. Unless it was for a laugh. Louis hork-sobs once as the water hits his face.

It’s only when Louis gets out of the shower and swipes a hand across the foggy mirror that he sees from the half-blurred mark on his cheek that Zayn’s drawn a dick on his face while Louis was passed out. He knows it was Zayn because Zayn tagged him, like he does all his graffiti, with a big stylized Z. Louis starts laughing, scrubs his face, laughs some more. He feels more like himself.

Down in the kitchen, Louis, still rubbing at his face, walks full-tilt into Liam’s waiting embrace. Liam presses his face once into Louis’s neck, and then pulls back and grips Louis by the shoulders.

“You’re sweaty,” Louis complains.

“Sorry,” Liam says. “I was just for a run. What time is your shift today?”

“I don’t have one,” Louis says. “I anticipated this massive hangover, sort of, clever me. Why?”

Liam glances at the floor, then back up at Louis with the full-on puppy face. The worst thing about Liam’s puppy face is that he has no idea he’s doing it. Louis had once tried to take a picture of it to show him, but it had deleted itself off his phone when he tried. Probably it doesn’t show up in mirrors, either. “Harry just said you might have a lead on me picking up some shifts, that’s all.”

Louis swallows. “Yeah, uh. I’m just going to grab a bite, but we could stop by and see, yeah?”

“Sure! Absolutely,” Liam says, smiling. “That’s really good of you, Lou.”

Louis smiles without any teeth and heads for the refrigerator.

 

 

 

Paul is distracted by the afternoon rush when they get to the café, so Louis manages to swing Liam a shift in under twenty minutes of pestering and helpfully framing Liam’s earnest little face with his hands. He’s about to call it a job well done and head out when Amy swings through the door in front of him, tugging Harry by the hand behind her.

“Louis!” Amy exclaims. “I’m so excited for tonight, I can’t believe it!” Amy is the bassist in Harry’s friend Fred’s band which doesn’t have a name yet (to be fair, they occasionally call themselves Intermission, but only when Louis can’t prevent it, as he’s of the opinion that it’s like announcing before the set that if anyone needs a wee, now’s the time).

“Tonight?” Louis says to Amy, trying determinedly to avoid the big questioning gaze he can feel Harry aiming at him.

“The gig at Vine’s?” Amy says, tilting her pageboy head. “Are you not coming, then?”

“Oh,” says Louis, “I don’t know. I mean, they sacked me, so.”

“I thought you weren’t working today,” Harry says from behind Amy.

“I’m not,” Louis says, not looking at Harry.

“Well, you have to come, anyway,” says Amy. “Harry’s going to play with us since Ian’s feeling ill.”

Louis does look at Harry then, and immediately feels bad for the way he’s behaving—it’s only Harry, with the same Harry face, the come-see-me-play face, and his shoulders drop. “Yeah,” he says. “Cheers, then. I’ll wear my best disguise.”

Amy claps, and Harry’s whole face lights up. He stumbles a bit, smiling, as a family edges past him to get to the door.

Liam comes over then, and drapes an arm over Louis’s shoulders. “Harry!” he says. “This is a coincidence.”

“Just here for a cheese toastie,” Harry says, his eyes flicking between Louis and Liam.

“I’m sure I can find you one,” Liam says. “I work here now, you know.” Louis tries to smile for Liam, and thinks he does a pretty good job of it.

“I’m going to go now, kids,” Louis says, yanking on Liam’s earlobe for no reason and kissing Amy on the cheek. “See you tonight, then.”

“Bye, babe,” says Amy, heading for the counter.

“You can—” Harry starts, turning as Louis is going out the door, but it swings shut behind him and Louis doesn’t get to hear what he can.

 

 

 

Louis’s best disguise involves wearing a beanie and a too-big shirt of Niall’s that mostly covers up his more recognizable tattoos. It’s hot in Vine’s; the ex-warehouse space is big enough to that it usually doesn’t overheat like the places nearby, but the downside is that when it does, the cooling system is limited to a sparse few fans near the ceiling. Louis slips in through the back late enough that it’s unlikely anyone will recognize him as the former employee who accidentally set fire to the curtain which runs along the back of the stage. There are crowds of people here already, milling around to the piped-in Replacements song. He’s already sweating under the beanie.

Louis has only just made it to a spot near the left of the stage, which is as far from the bar/his former boss as he can get, when Harry wanders onto the stage. A couple of people cheer, and he looks up and grins, waving a bit before leaning down to mess with the mic.

Someone touches Louis’s shoulder, and he looks around. It’s a girl he recognizes, dark hair, vaguely familiar—Cristina, he thinks, some friend of Zayn’s he must have met before. “Hey!” she’s saying. “I didn’t expect to see you back here.”

 _Cristina_ , he remembers, suddenly. He’d been watching her dance with Zayn and that was sort of how the curtain had caught fire. He hadn’t realized she’d seen him watching her. “Oh, right,” he says, stupidly. “I’m—my friend’s—”

There’s a loud whistle of feedback from the amps and then not-Intermission launches into their first song, the rest of them having taken the stage when Louis wasn’t looking. He mouths, _Sorry,_ at Cristina and gestures toward the stage, and she laughs and points to Louis’s chest, then her own, then the dance floor.

Louis glances involuntarily at her wrist as she’s pointing—three months—and she catches him looking, frowns at him, but it’s all he needs to pull her out with him, and then she’s laughing, having forgiven him.

Cristina is quite pretty, taller than Louis by a couple of centimeters, with a lot of long dark hair. She’s wearing a cropped-off t-shirt and when she lifts her arms to gather up her hair and let it drop again, freeing her sweaty neck briefly, Louis can see a collection of moles and freckles scattered down her belly. She twists around, smiling, and pulls him to her; they dance to Harry’s voice shot through the microphone, echoing around the warehouse.

Louis hasn’t had a night like this in a long time, getting slowly blurrier as Cristina goes back to the bar to grab them drinks. The last time he’d danced like this with somebody new was almost a year ago, before Eleanor. That’s what he had been going to do with his birthday, he remembers. They’re sticking together now, and then Cristina’s kissing him, stopping to giggle every few seconds. Louis can feel his face crinkle. This is so much easier than he thought it would be.

The band crashes to a halt and the people around them clap. Cristina loops her arms around Louis’s neck and kisses him harder, trying to stop him from being distracted by the stage, but Louis can’t help opening his eyes. Harry’s sweaty on stage and he pulls up his shirt to wipe his forehead. He looks like a different person up there, lit up gold, and Louis hears the extra projection in his voice when he shouts “Last one!” into the microphone as Fred drags an electric keyboard out from backstage. His eyes scan the crowd, and Louis feels his muscles tense as Harry spots him, his face serious. But the expression clears just as quickly as it came, and then Harry’s grinning, glancing around at Fred as he starts up with a song Louis vaguely knows from having heard Harry sing in the shower. He can’t place it until they hit the chorus— _Everybody’s got a hungry heart—_ Bruce Springsteen is Harry’s most enduring American obsession after Kesha, and Louis is almost certain that Harry made Fred’s band learn the song as a condition of his taking Ian’s place tonight. Louis laughs when Amy starts in on the _ahh-ahh_ s.

Cristina is looking at him fondly, tongue against her teeth. “You want to come back with me?” she asks, leaning in close to his ear.

Louis nods and turns his face into her neck, pressing his mouth to her jaw briefly before taking her hand and heading for the exit.

 

 

 

Louis wakes up to total darkness and the smell of Harry’s sweat all around him. Harry is pressed up against his back in Louis’s bed, breath loud in Louis’s ear. “You left before my set was over,” he mumbles. He has vodka and mint all mixed up on his breath.

“What are you doing,” Louis whispers, twisting around and trying to see into the dark. Harry must have shut the door behind him when he came in.

“Left with that girl,” Harry says, nosing into Louis’s cheek. “I thought you’d be there to tell me I did a good job.”

“I can leave with whoever I want to,” Louis says, a bit louder.

“Did you fuck her?” Harry asks, and now Louis’s vision is clearing, he can see the bluish outline of Harry’s shoulders in the darkness.

“None of your business, is it,” Louis says. “Go to sleep.”

“Can’t sleep,” Harry says. “Watched you from the stage.”

“Did you just get back?” Louis frowns. “What time is it?”

“Were you thinking of me?” Harry says into Louis’s neck. “Want you to fuck me, Louis. Louis.”

Louis tenses. “You talk such shit,” he says at last, trying to laugh.

Harry pulls back, leaning over Louis. Louis can see the faint indication of his frown, the line between his eyebrows. “Not joking,” he says. “I thought you, when you asked me before—”

“You said that was like, mates,” Louis says. “I didn’t say you could do this.”

“Do what,” Harry says, pressing his whole sweaty body up against Louis’s. “Don’t you want to fuck me, I’m your mate.”

“This isn’t funny,” Louis says.

“Not trying to be funny,” Harry breathes, his mouth a bare centimeter away from Louis’s. “Trying to get you to fuck me.”

“Harry,” Louis says. The air around the bed feels sluggish like it does in dreams, and his hips press up against Harry’s as if they’re not connected to his brain. “Why are you doing this,” Louis mumbles, letting Harry lace their fingers together as the pressure between them gets cloyingly hot.

Harry doesn’t answer, just buries his face in Louis’s neck again. Louis can feel Harry’s mouth, the hard press of his teeth, and the blood in his ears is going so fast he can practically hear his heart over Harry’s harsh breaths. He’s aware at last of Harry’s hard-on, trapped in his jeans, pressed up against Louis’s thigh, his own slotted up against the groove in Harry’s hip, dragging against the denim, and his breathing gets harder to manage all at once.

“Yeah,” Harry mumbles drunkenly, getting a hand between them, “Lou—”

“What,” Louis says faintly, hot all over and finding it hard to open his eyes.

“Please,” Harry whispers, sounding suddenly lost. “Please tell me if I’m wrong.”

Louis doesn’t pretend he doesn’t know what Harry means. “Yeah, babe,” he says finally, pulling his other hand away from Harry’s and fumbling for his face, “you’re not wrong, of course—”

“Ah—” Harry’s hips stutter. “More—tell me—”

Harry’s hand on himself heats Louis with every stroke. Louis feels like he’s going crazy with it. “ ’course I want to fuck you,” he gets out after a minute, “everyone wants to fuck you, don’t they, you’re such a—you’re so—your face—”

“Want you to come on my face,” Harry says. “Want you to fuck me up.”

“Sh—shit,” Louis bites out, and comes in his pyjama bottoms, Harry letting out a long harsh groan above him and then letting his muscles go loose, falling over Louis.

There’s silence for a long moment, and then Harry comes back to himself and Louis can see his eyes open sleepily, blinking. “I knew it,” Harry says, voice gravelly.

Louis’s pants are getting clammy. “Knew what,” he says, feeling dizzy with the knowledge that it wasn’t a dream.

Harry presses his mouth up against Louis’s ear and says quietly, “You can fuck me anytime you want, you know.” Then he kisses Louis’s temple and swings himself out of the bed, stumbling back into the hallway. The brief burst of light against Louis’s vision is blinding, and then the door closes and he’s left in the dark again, blinking the spots away from his vision.

 

 

 

In the morning there’s a mottled red mark on his neck when he looks in the mirror. He glances at the mark, then down at his wrist, back and forth like that for a while.

Over the next week he and Harry don't see each other much. It's easy to avoid him; Louis has another audition on Wednesday, anyhow, this one for a rather grim-looking theater in South London putting together an amateur production of _Death of a Salesman_ in which nobody speaks. Louis shuts himself up in his room when he's at home and tells himself he's got to memorize his lines. Even if he doesn't _say_ them, he thinks, probably just knowing them will have some positive effect on his performance. When Harry calls them down for flatmates' dinner Louis says he's not hungry. Late that night Zayn brings him a plate with leftovers and tells him he's being weird.

His wordless audition goes over particularly well, he thinks. They tell him they're letting people know on Friday, and he buzzes his way through his late-week shifts at the cafe, freaking Liam out a little bit, as Liam's clearly been gossiping with Zayn and knows that something is up with Louis (Liam receives all of his interpersonal wisdom from Zayn, and sometimes Louis thinks he's even repeating whole sentences verbatim when trying to give Louis advice—it's actually very effective, Zayn's comparative insight filtered through Liam's crinkly worried face, and God only knows what they could get Louis to do if they combined their powers intentionally). Twice he offers to take over the register so Louis can go take his break, even though Liam does not know how to work the register yet and it would obviously be a disaster.

He volunteered to teach Liam how to close that night as a distraction, but he grows twitchier by the hour as it gets past four-thirty. Maybe they've got nine-to-five jobs, he thinks. Maybe they can't call and let people know until after they're home, six, six-thirty, maybe. This comforts him until about seven-thirty, at which point he goes downhill until, just after close at ten p.m., he's slumped under a table in the middle of the cafe, staring at his phone. Liam's standing over him, his eyebrows wrinkled up. "Is it a girl, then?" he asks. "Is it Eleanor?"

"What? No," Louis says. "It's stupid. It's nothing."

"Well..." Liam shifts his weight. "I'm almost finished in the kitchen, we could go watch Iron Man 3. Make a night of it, you know, to take your mind off ... the thing."

"Why are you hesitating about Iron Man?" Louis unslumps and puts his phone away. "Did you have plans for tonight?"

Liam grimaces. "I told Zayn I'd go with him to some party Harry's friend is having—it's somebody's birthday but I don't even know her, and I bet Zayn would rather stay in anyway," he finishes apologetically.

"No, that's brilliant," Louis says, getting out from under the table. "I'm hijacking your plans. I'm going with you to a stranger's birthday party and getting very drunk."

"Are you sure that's best for you right now?" Liam asks, annoyingly gentle.

Louis smushes over Liam's face with both his hands, trying to physically rearrange his worried expression. Then he pulls away to check his handiwork. Better; now Liam only looks cross. "Yes," Louis says. "It is the perfect thing for me right now. Go on, finish washing dishes, I'll stay here."

"Fine. You'll stack the chairs while I'm in the back?" Liam asks.

"No. I'm really not sure why you think I would do that, Liam," Louis tells him. "I'm going to wait for you to wash the dishes, and then I'm going to watch while you stack the chairs, which I am training you to do, as your coworker."

Liam scoffs, but then he also carries Louis on his back half the way to Harry's friend's party, which Louis chooses to take as a sign of a well-trained coworker and not of how pitiful he may or may not seem currently.

(While Liam washed dishes, Louis looked up the number of the theater and called it. He hung up fast when it hit the answerphone.)

They reach the shitty hipster club where Harry's friend is having her birthday party just past eleven, and Louis recognizes it as they shove past the door—he got Fred's band a gig here once, early last year when they were just starting out, a real coup as he wasn't even an employee, just a flirt who knew who the manager was.

It doesn't take long to find the table of people in unflattering bandanas, plus Zayn, whose "club face" falls infinitesimally as he spots Liam and lets his relief show through. He pulls it back up when he sees Louis behind Liam, though, and as they greet everyone at the table ("Happy birthday!" Louis yells, assuming the right person will acknowledge it), Zayn says over the din, "Impressed you're here, Louis, thought you were avoiding Harry."

Louis shoots Zayn an unimpressed look and slides into the seat next to Harry's, throwing an arm over Harry's shoulders. "I'm not avoiding Harry," he announces, giving Harry a squeeze. "I don't know why you would say such a thing unless you were trying to sow unrest in our happy household, Zayn."

"Gonna go dance, I think," Harry mumbles, and shrugs Louis's arm off as he's getting up.

"He calls it dancing," Louis tells the table, making a skeptical face.

"Oh my god," the pink-haired girl whose birthday it is says suddenly, leaning over to clutch Louis's arm. "I figured out who you are."

"Who am I?" Louis asks, leaning toward her as well.

"You're the one who manages Intermission!" she says, adding, very seriously, "I love them. I actually love them."

"Uh," Louis says, laughing, "I don't know that it’s management, what I do."

"Can you get them to play here?" she asks. "I can see you haven't brought me a birthday present, so it's the least you could do, really."

"I don't know," Louis says frankly. "I could try?"

"Try," she says, patting him on the arm, and then leans back to the rest of the table, who are involved in an intense argument about Neutral Milk Hotel, to the detriment of humanity.

Louis downs two of whatever Harry abandoned ("green tea shots," according to one of the birthday partygoers) and heads to the back of the club to duck backstage, trying to look purposeful enough that nobody stops him. It helps that he's still in his black clothes from the cafe.

Once back, he makes a couple of quick phone calls and then claps his hands, causing a couple of guys arguing over an amp to look up. “Boys!” Louis addresses them, doing his best pompous schoolmaster. “I’m so sorry to have to tell you this, but the show for tonight’s been canceled. We’re closing early. Technical problems, I’m afraid.”

“Who’re you?” one of them says suspiciously.

“I’m Louis,” Louis explains patiently, as if talking to someone very slow. “I’m Angie’s assistant, and we need you out from backstage as soon as possible.”

“You can’t kick us out without paying us,” the other one argues.

“Yes, but since you haven’t actually played, here’s a bit for your time in coming down here and we do apologize,” Louis says, handing them each a rumpled twenty-pound note from his back pocket, which represents nearly a week’s tip money.

“Fuck this then,” says one of the boys, grabbing his equipment and kicking over a mic stand.

“Tell Angie we said fuck you and we’re not coming back,” adds the second boy, hurrying after his bandmate and nearly tripping over the felled mic stand.

“Lovely chat!” Louis calls after them, and then goes to the sound booth to find Angie.

Angie is nearly six feet tall and chesty, with squarish drawn-on eyebrows. “Louis!” she exclaims when she sees him, enveloping him in her breasts. “I haven’t seen you in a bit, have I.” She releases him and shakes him a bit.

“Hi, love,” Louis says, trying to fix his hair.

“How’s that band of yours?” she asks.

“Well,” says Louis. “I thought I’d talk to you about that, actually. Your act tonight seems to have fucked off rather in a hurry, and I thought you could use my help.”

“What do you mean fucked off,” Angie says darkly.

“Family emergency is what I heard,” Louis says. “At any rate I know an act with nothing much to do who happen to already be on their way to this very club at this very moment with all of their equipment and a full set prepared.”

“Do you,” she says, not a question.

“I do. In fact.” Louis sweats a little under her gaze.

“Then—” Angie shakes her head. “You’re a lifesaver, Louis.” She hugs him again. Louis can feel his face doing the thing where it looks a little evil.

Fifty minutes later Louis is drunk, grinding on Liam while Zayn looks on from the table, laughing. The pink-haired girl whose birthday it was had told him he was mental—she hadn’t meant _now, today_ , she explained—and then that he did a brilliant birthday present and gave him a bone-cracking hug. Louis is feeling pretty pleased with himself. He _does_ do a brilliant birthday present, after all, _and_ it had involved mischief, which is Louis’s favorite thing to involve in other things.

Liam wraps his arms around Louis and yells in his ear, “Feeling better now, then?”

“What?” Louis yells back, belatedly recalling his earlier disappointment with the audition. His phone hasn’t rung since then, but it’s all right. He’s made his peace with it. He should be drunk all the time, probably, then he’d be at peace all the time. Maybe Zayn is drunk all the time. Maybe that’s Zayn’s secret. “What’s Zayn’s secret?” Louis shouts at Liam, twisting around to throw his arms around Liam’s neck so he can reach his ear.

Liam looks over at Zayn across the room, and they suddenly burst into matching crinkled grins. Louis could throw up on them sometimes, honestly. “Wish I knew,” Liam tells Louis, still watching Zayn. Louis’s heart seizes up and he shoves Liam toward Zayn, motioning for Zayn to come to the dance floor.

“Done with you now,” Louis says. “Gonna find someone worthy of this body,” as Liam swats at his arse as he’s stumbling away. Before he goes three steps he finds himself colliding with someone’s chest. “Sorry, mate,” Louis says automatically.

“No trouble,” the bloke says. He’s taller than Louis, blond and lanky, and he grabs Louis’s hips as if to steady him, but he’s still dancing and so is Louis, and he doesn’t let go, so that in a few moments they’re dancing together. Louis’s brain works to catch up and then falls behind again as the boy tugs him closer. The song drags on and Louis’s head swims as the boy’s hands work themselves down Louis’s hips.

“What’s your name?” the boy says into Louis’s ear.

Louis swallows and tells him. “What’s yours?”

“Gil. Thirty-five years,” he adds, without Louis having asked. Louis doesn’t answer, so Gil takes his hand and holds it closer to his face in the dim light. Louis jerks it back; it’s not like Gil is going to find anything there. Gil chuckles. “I dunno if that’s better or worse than me, mate,” he says.

Louis shrugs and presses back into Gil’s grip, closing his eyes. He feels lips on his throat as a new song starts up; his mouth falls open in surprise and then he’s being kissed. His reaction is slow and takes a long time to surface in his thoughts. At last it comes to him, and Louis pulls away, his mouth uncomfortably wet. “I’m going to go,” he tells Gil.

“What?” says Gil, leaning forward. He hasn’t heard Louis over the music.

“I’m gonna—” Louis says, motioning vaguely toward “away.” Gil still looks confused, so Louis just takes off toward where Liam and Zayn are doing some stupid dance that involves Zayn pretending his arms are Liam’s arms.

“Where’s Harry?” Louis shouts at them.

Zayn makes Liam appear to shrug as Liam doubles over laughing. Louis scowls and Zayn pulls his arms out from under Liam’s armpits and goes over to Louis. “Just go back to the party, mate,” Zayn tells him.

“Why?” Louis says. “I need to find Harry, I need to tell him something.”

“Tell him it when you’re not drunk,” Zayn advises.

“Just tell me where he is,” Louis snaps.

“He left,” Zayn says. “Probably on account of you being an arsehole most of this week and also tonight.”

“What do you mean an arsehole,” Louis says, incensed. “I got his friend a brilliant birthday present, I’m the opposite of an arsehole. Where did he leave to?”

“Dunno,” Zayn says, already looking around for Liam. “Anyway, I’m not the one who’s in a strop. You’ll make up soon, anyway, you always do.” He shoulders through the crowd and away from Louis.

Louis seethes for as long as it takes to down another green tea shot, but as soon as the alcohol hits him he feels suddenly, overwhelmingly tired. The party loses its sheen. It’s only one o’clock, but he heads out anyway, kissing Angie’s cheek on his way out. It’s some blocks back to the flat and his sweat dries on his skin in the nighttime chill. He’s got gooseflesh by the time he pushes through the front door and up to his bedroom. He collapses on his bed without bothering to shut the door, figuring at least he should leave it open so someone will know when he slips into a coma.

As soon as he’s on his bed, the sound of the front door opening and people laughing annoys him and he rolls over to put his face in a pillow. But it’s Harry laughing, he realizes mid-roll, Harry’s back—and he’s about to call out to him when Harry’s laugh suddenly drops into a groan, cut off as someone kisses him. Louis’s stomach twists. He almost gets up to shut the door and then freezes as he hears their footsteps on the stairs—they’d see it if he closed his door. So he stays in the dark, half-upright on his bed, staring at the empty hallway past the door.

Then Harry stumbles past, pulling someone behind him—a man, dark-haired, with heavy stubble and broad shoulders. They stop to kiss each other just out of Louis’s sightline, but he can hear the noise of it, can imagine it, now that he’s seen the man. Then the door to Harry’s bedroom shuts behind them and Louis draws in a breath.

He should shut his door, too. But that would make too much noise. Harry would know he was here.

There’s a thud from Harry’s bedroom and Louis hears Harry gasp. Louis can hear them talking, then, the words too muffled for him to separate out. Then the noise of bedsprings and a couple of shoes hitting the floor. More talking, and then a brief silence—Louis’s brain fills in the gaps, the quiet fumble of getting clothes off—and then Harry lets out a load moan and Louis throws his arm over his eyes. Harry’s being louder than he ever has been in Louis’s memory. He must think he’s alone in the flat. Louis should get up. Louis should slam the door or something. He’s—

Harry starts talking suddenly in the other room, most of it indistinct, but Louis picks out “fuck” a couple of times, and then the unmistakable sound of a slap and Harry’s answering groan. It’s so quiet in the moments between noises that it makes them more obscene when they happen. Louis has never seen Harry get hit except by their other friends or by Louis himself, as a joke, but he can picture it without any effort, now: Harry’s face pink, pinker where the blow landed. Mouth open, startled. There’s a lull and then a long groan and Louis’s own face heats up. He’s listening to Harry get fucked, that’s what’s happening in the other room.

The bed in the other room starts thumping quietly and Harry gets louder, babbling something Louis can’t understand, and all of a sudden Louis is furious at himself for letting this happen, at Harry for getting inconsiderately laid where Louis can hear him, and before he can think it through any longer he gets up and slams his door closed.

There’s a sudden silence and then the thumping picks up again, faster than before, and Harry says, so clearly Louis can hear it through both of their doors, “ _Ben.”_

Louis doesn’t move away from the door. His whole body feels tense.

“Ben,” Harry moans again. “Oh, fuck, fuck me, Ben—”

There’s another slap and Harry says it louder. It goes on forever, it seems like. Somewhere in the middle Louis sinks down against his door and starts to pull himself off, hating every minute of it.

 

 

 

Ben leaves early the next morning, and Louis ducks out before Harry can come out of his room. He doesn’t have work until eleven, and in the meantime he goes wandering around London alone, something he almost never does. He ends up sitting near the river eating some sort of breakfast sandwich, legs crossed underneath him.

Work is a long half-hungover slog, Liam chattering in his ear the whole time. Louis drags himself to Fred’s flat after, and they spend the evening smoking and watching _Fight Club_ for the eighth time as it’s (boringly) Fred’s favorite movie. At this point it only soothes Louis. He makes it a point to fall asleep on Fred’s sofa. He has work again in the morning.

When he finally makes it back to the flat Sunday night, he’s expecting some confrontation with Harry over Louis having listened to him fuck Ben all night, or at the very least Zayn asking where he’s been, but there’s only Niall, hovering over the stove and blasting Bublé like a middle-aged mum.

“Where is everyone?” Louis asks him.

Niall blows on a spoon and holds it out to Louis. Louis shakes his head and Niall shrugs and puts it in his own mouth. When he can talk again, he says, “Liam and Zayn went to dinner somewhere. Dunno where Harry is.”

Louis is absurdly hurt that nobody invited him to dinner, even though he wasn’t around for them to ask. “How much food is that?” he demands instead, peering into the enormous pot of pasta on the stove. “Are you having people over?” He hopes Niall is having people over. He needs to have someone to be Louis in front of. His phone hasn’t rung in practically twenty-four hours.

“Nah,” Niall says. “I’m just hungry.” He glances up at Louis. “You can have some, if you want.”

“Thanks but no thanks, mate,” Louis says, trying to put on a cheerful face. “I’m just going to head upstairs, I think. Bit tired.”

Niall bobs his head, still frowning, and Louis makes his way upstairs. At the last second he turns past his own room and into Harry’s.

It’s empty, not just of Harry—the walls are mostly bare except for some unremarkable art prints and a bunch of tacks in one corner holding up a few of Harry’s necklaces. Harry never bothers to decorate his own spaces, spends too much time in other people’s. His bed is up against the near wall, white sheets and an ugly orange duvet. Louis pulls off his shirt and his shoes, leaving them on the floor, and climbs into the bed, curling up into sleep.

 

 

 

He starts awake when the door opens. It’s morning outside now, a flood of whitened light coming through the blinds. Harry pushes into the room and starts to pull his t-shirt off over his head, then stops mid-motion when he sees Louis blinking awake. Louis wants to hide but he can’t look away. Slowly Harry finishes pulling his shirt off and drops it on the floor. “What are you doing here,” he says at last, eyebrows pulling together.

Sometimes when Louis is away he forgets what Harry’s voice sounds like and it’s always startling. “Missed you,” Louis says without thinking.

Harry’s face smooths out. “Missed you, too,” he says. He unbuckles his belt and pulls his trousers off, then climbs into bed alongside Louis. “Why were you being such a prick before?” he asks, rather bluntly, Louis thinks.

Louis pulls his eyes away from Harry’s pink mouth. “I heard you. The other night,” he says.

“I know,” Harry says. “You were being a prick before that, though. I thought you liked me,” he adds.

Louis’s stomach tightens. “I do, you know I—Hazza—”

“No—” Harry shakes his head. “I didn’t mean—me, I meant—what we were doing, I thought it was all right with you as well. You said—”

“I want to do what you said before,” Louis blurts.

“What? What did I say before?” Harry asks.

“I want—” Louis breathes out. “To fuck you,” he finishes finally. “If that’s all right. You said—”

“I know.” Harry isn’t moving and Louis is getting nervous. Harry looks at the ceiling and then back at Louis. His eyes are green and direct. “Are you going to ignore me again after?”

“No,” Louis says as quickly as he can. “No, no—I’m—I—”

“Did you get off with that bloke from the club?” Harry asks. “Is it out of your system now?”

Louis feels anger and shame heat his belly. “I don’t know,” he says. “Is Ben out of your system?”

“You didn’t have to listen,” Harry says.

“You didn’t have to be so loud when you knew I was there,” Louis snaps. They’re both sitting up in bed now, half-shouting at each other.

“You’re the one who thinks I’m a slag,” Harry says. “You’re the one who thinks I’ll just get off with anyone, just for fun, like it’s a game to me just because I haven’t got a timer.”

“Well, it’s—” Louis lets out a harsh breath.

“It’s what,” Harry demands.

Louis knows he shouldn’t but he says it anyway. “It’s immature not to have one. Everyone knows the only reason not to get one is that you’re too scared.”

Harry’s breathing hard. “I’ve changed my mind,” he says after a minute. “I don’t want you to fuck me.” Louis is about to snap that it’s fine when Harry says, “I want to fuck you instead.”

Louis feels like all the wind’s been knocked out of him. He stares at Harry, unable to say anything.

“See,” Harry says. “I’m not scared. You’re scared, Louis.”

Louis’s mind is going too fast. He doesn’t know what to do. At last he forces out, “I’m not—”

“Not what?” Harry asks. Louis can only meet his gaze until Harry drops his eyes and climbs out of bed, reaching for his trousers.

Louis feels like he’s losing everything. “Harry,” he says finally. “Hazza.”

Harry won’t look at him. Louis gets out of bed. “Hazza,” he says. He reaches for Harry’s hand, pulls his trousers away from him. Harry finally glances up and Louis steels himself, then presses his mouth to Harry’s like he hasn’t since they were seventeen.

Harry’s whole body goes limp and Louis grips his shoulder, his neck to keep him upright. Harry’s mouth is soft against his, and Louis falls against him too, both of them stumbling backward toward the wall. Louis is hot all over, and his mouth stings where Harry’s lips touch; he feels like he’s burning up. He’s never felt like this just from kissing, except that once on his birthday. And Harry is his best mate, except when he opens his eyes so close to Louis’s face Louis is floored, Louis is ready to give up. Harry was right, Louis realizes. He’s scared. He’s absolutely terrified.

Harry pulls back suddenly, his mouth separating from Louis’s with a slick noise. “We don’t have to—”

“Shut up,” Louis says, pushing until he’s got Harry up against the wall. He presses his teeth to Harry’s neck and sucks a mark into it as Harry writhes and gasps underneath him. He pulls off, satisfied, and says, “I didn’t mean what I said before.”  
  
“I know,” Harry says, his mouth red and bitten. He runs his hands up Louis’s sides.

“I’m a prick,” Louis says, pulling at Harry’s hair.

Harry’s eyes flutter shut. “I know,” he says.

“Do you still want to fuck me?” Louis asks.

Harry opens his eyes. Their faces are so close that Louis can feel Harry’s breath. “Do you want me to fuck you?” Harry asks laconically.

“Yes,” Louis says.

Harry’s eyes close again and he palms himself through his jeans. “Have you ever—?”

“No.” Louis presses another kiss to Harry’s mouth. It’s so good he can’t believe it. He takes another kiss, and then another, until Harry’s making soft noises against his mouth. He bites Harry’s lip, hard, and Harry groans. His hands slip around to Louis’s arse and Louis swallows hard. He’s only messed about a bit before, with Eleanor. He’s never had more than a couple of fingers. Harry’s hands span his whole lower back without even trying. Louis pushes up into Harry’s grip, just to see what he’ll do.

What Harry does is groan as his legs give way, and he drops to his knees in front of Louis, pushing forward so Louis has to grab the wall as Harry rubs his face across Louis’s cock through his jeans, hands still gripping Louis’s arse. Louis can barely look at him, he’s so pretty. “Christ,” he whispers, and Harry opens his eyes and glances up at him, breaking into a grin.

“Can I suck you off now?” Harry asks, his mouth pressed up against the line of Louis’s prick, so that Louis can feel every word as it’s spoken. He shudders and reaches down to touch Harry’s face, and Harry turns into his palm, making Louis dizzy as he remembers how many times Harry has done this when they were just mates, nuzzling up against him, and his voice when he said he’d wanted to suck Louis off since meeting him.

“No,” Louis finds himself saying. He pulls away from Harry a little bit and Harry’s face falls. Louis instantly feels like the stupidest person on the planet, and he gets down on his knees on front of Harry and kisses him. Harry kisses back, and even just that makes Louis feel worse, because Harry is always so open, so ready to give Louis whatever he wants. Louis would have refused to kiss back out of hurt. “Not _no_ ,” Louis explains when they pull apart. “Just not now. Is that all right?”

Harry nods and presses his face into Louis’s neck. Louis wraps his arms around him. “Don’t you have class in like, twenty minutes?” Louis says into Harry’s hair.

“I’ll skip,” Harry says, brightening immediately and pulling his face away from Louis. “Is that all? Because—”

Louis kisses him again, sucking at his bottom lip. It’s a long minute before he pulls away to stare at Harry. “Go to class, Haz,” he whispers.

“Okay,” Harry whispers back, and then: “Wait.” He straightens up, hurrying long-leggedly across the room to find one of his jumpers, a floppy lavender version, which he stuffs into Louis’s arms. “Wear this.”

“I live just down the hall, you prat,” Louis says. “Are you worried Niall’s going to catch me topless on the way?”

“No.” Harry’s wearing that gleeful expression where he thinks he’s thought of something brilliant. Usually that means Louis is about to be subjected to a “joke,” but instead Harry says, “I just want to think about you wearing it while I’m in class.”

“Oh,” Louis says, preening a little bit. He pulls the jumper on over his head, enjoying Harry’s hungry expression. He’s barely got it on when he’s knocked back half-onto the bed, Harry’s mouth at his neck. “Jesus, H,” Louis mumbles, winded, and Harry tosses him a huge grin and levers himself off the bed to pull his trousers back on and grab a shirt from the closet. He takes nearly three minutes to choose the right combination of necklaces, shoving his books into his bag as a kind of afterthought. Louis props himself up on his elbows and watches him from the bed, head buzzing.

Just as he’s got all his things, Harry suddenly drops his bag and falls back to his knees on the floor between Louis’s spread legs. “You promise?” he asks, nose pressed against Louis’s thigh. “About later?”

Louis is petrified, watching him. He puts out his hand and runs his thumb over Harry’s mouth. Harry’s eyes drift closed. “I promise,” Louis tells him.

Harry nods happily, eyes still closed, and then he grabs Louis’s fingers and presses a messy kiss to Louis’s fingertips. “Later, then,” he says, opening his eyes, and gathers his things and dashes from the room.

Louis falls back on the bed. The room seems incredibly quiet with only his breathing. Harry’s jumper is itchy but he keeps it on, just, like, in case. After a minute he hears footsteps on the stairs and sits up quickly, preparing for Harry to rush back into the room, but it’s only Zayn who inches the door open and sidles over to sit on the edge of the bed next to him.

Zayn’s smoking and he offers Louis the joint. Louis takes it gratefully and there’s a pause as he inhales.

“Glad I found you here,” Zayn says, giving Louis a meaningful look. Louis pretends not to understand him, but it only takes him thirty seconds to give up and fall sideways, letting Zayn take his weight. Zayn pets Louis’s hair kindly.

After nearly ten minutes of companionable silence in the early morning light, Zayn clears his throat. “I think I’m going to propose to Liam,” he says.

 

 

 

That afternoon Harry hangs around the café for an hour before Louis’s shift ends. He puts eight pounds into the tip jar and gives Louis the dumbest grin Louis has ever seen. He’s wearing not only the plaid shirt he left the flat in, but a second plaid shirt on top of that one. He takes up the nicest table by the window and messes about on his phone. Every fifteen minutes or so somebody tries to start a conversation with him and Louis, watching from behind the counter, is taken again by an odd combination of smugness and jealousy, until Harry politely extricates himself and sends Louis another one of those stupid grins. His mouth is still red. Louis barely hears what Liam says to him the entire hour and fucks up three different people’s orders.

At the end of his shift Louis yanks off his apron and grabs a beaming Harry by the shirtfront, dragging him out behind the café.

“Is it later now, then?” Harry asks breathlessly as Louis slams the door behind him and pulls Harry stumbling into the back alley.

“No, you wanker,” Louis says. “You distracted me as I was working. At my job.”

“Sorry, Louis,” Harry says, not looking sorry in the least. He looks like he’s itching to get back on his knees. Louis hasn’t let go of Harry’s shirtfront yet, and he drags his other hand across the front of Harry’s skinny jeans.

“Still wearing your jumper,” Louis says, more quietly. People are passing by the alley, and a couple look in at them.

“I saw—uh, that you were,” Harry says, ducking his head, dimples edging at his smile.

“Did you think about me in class, then?” Louis asks conversationally, letting go of Harry’s shirtfront and smoothing out the wrinkles with flat palms.

Harry swallows. “Yes,” he says slowly.

“What did you think about?” Louis touches Harry’s face, his mouth.

“About your cock,” Harry gets out eventually. He brings his own hands up to Louis’s and tugs them down, gently, lacing their fingers together.

Louis doesn’t know how close he’s allowed to get. He breathes in, still soap, still socks. Harry’s breath is on his cheek. “What about my cock, H?”

“Want, ah.” Harry closes his eyes. “Want to make you come again.”

“Deviant,” Louis tells him, raising his eyebrows. Harry bursts into helpless giggles and then lurches forward to press his mouth to Louis’s, wet and uncoordinated. In a moment they’re clutching each other, breathing into each other’s mouths. Louis breaks away, gripping Harry by the back of the neck. “You want to make me come?”

Harry nods frantically and almost drops to his knees right there; Louis, hysterically, thinks about if Paul chose this moment to take the trash out. Louis pulls Harry close to him and says into his ear, “Love seeing you want it, babe. You’re so pretty,” flushing all the way up his neck, but Harry lights up when he hears it, pressing himself up against Louis desperately. Louis rubs his palm over Harry’s cock through his jeans and Harry gives a full-body shudder. Louis stares at him until Harry’s eyes open and then he looks away, caught. His hand on Harry’s cock moves a bit quicker, hoping to distract him.

“Tell me how much,” Louis murmurs after several long minutes, his eyes safely fixed on the brick wall behind Harry’s head.

Harry chokes a little in Louis’s ear as he’s pushing himself into Louis’s hand. “Anything,” he says finally. His voice sounds rough, and Louis can hear the rattle of his inhalation. “Anything you want, I’d do it.”

“What if I told you to get your kit off right here, where all these people can see you?” Louis asks, fingers tightening in the curls at the back of Harry’s neck, shaking him a little. He pulls back so Harry can see his face. “If I said that’s what gets me off?”

Harry’s cheeks are bright pink; he bites his lip and his cock jerks under Louis’s hand. “Yes,” he mumbles.

Louis couldn’t look at him before and now he can’t look away; he’s suddenly, maddeningly jealous of everybody who’s seen Harry like this before, who knew that he could look like this. This should just be for Louis. “What if I told you to put your hands up against the wall?” Louis says aloud. “So I could fuck you right here. What if that’s what I want you to do.”

“Yes,” Harry says, squeezing his eyes closed. His mouth falls open as Louis tightens his grip.

“What if I told you to stop right now?” Louis asks. Harry’s breath hitches and Louis leans in. “I want you to walk back through the café looking absolutely fucked, H, with nothing to show for it except this—” He jerks Harry, hard, one last time, and then lets go, bringing his hands up instead to pin Harry’s wrists to the brick wall. Louis is about to add, “so everyone can see how much you want to fuck me,” but before he can say it Harry writhes against the wall, face screwed up, and lets out a choked-off moan. His whole body tightens and then he sags back against the wall, sweaty and pink.

Louis stares. He reaches out, tentatively, to touch Harry’s face and Harry turns into his palm like he had that morning, mouthing at it without any real purpose. “Did you—” Louis coughs and tries to keep his voice from cracking. “Did you come, just now?”

Harry opens his eyes. “Sorry,” he says, gravelly. He runs a shaky hand through his hair.

“Jesus,” Louis whispers, feeling his own face heat up. He leans in carefully and kisses Harry, softer than he means to.

When they pull apart, Harry gives Louis the most brilliant smile Louis has ever seen from him, a full-face beam that makes Louis feel punched in the gut. “You’re good at that,” Harry says.

Louis tries to get control of his face, but he’s pretty sure he’s still staring impossibly. “I have to get to Fred’s,” he says at last. “I said I’d sit in on practice.”

“Can I come with you?” Harry asks.

“You want to come to Fred’s?”

Harry nods. “I’m a big fan of Intermission, me.”

“You can come if you don’t call them that,” Louis tells him, but he can’t stop smiling.

 

 

 

Harry comes with Louis to band practice, wet pants and all, and drapes himself over Louis the entire time. He barely looks away from Louis to say hello to Fred. Everything Louis says is the funniest thing in the world, and Harry’s dimples are on show nearly the entire time when he isn’t nosing sleepy-eyed into Louis’s cheek. Louis feels like he might have grown several inches; it’s the sort of attention he used to get from Harry when they were first friends and inseparable, when Harry followed Louis everywhere and looked for his reaction first, no matter who was around or what was happening. Louis had forgotten how heady it was to have such intense devotion from Harry, who had more friends now that they were older and in a bigger city, more people to draw him away from Louis, people who were funnier and cleverer and more deserving than Louis. He’s glutted with Harry’s attention now, and he wonders if he’d done it, if he’d been cooler, if he’d figured it out faster, if he’d kissed Harry back on his seventeenth birthday—could he have had this all along?

In the rare moments when Harry isn’t looking at him, Louis stares at Harry’s long eyelashes, at his curvy mouth and the stray curls around his left ear. He couldn’t have had this when he was seventeen, he decides. He wouldn’t have been brave enough. He’s barely brave enough now.

Band practice is decent enough, and with his three seconds of spare time left over from staring at Harry, Louis helps Fred fix up one of their earlier songs with a new tempo and less embarrassing lyrics, and makes a rudimentary schedule of potential gigs for the coming month. Ian gives Louis a sardonic look while Harry’s in the bathroom, and Amy raises her eyebrows as Louis pretends not to see it. Fred, as per usual, notices nothing.

Harry insists on stopping for groceries on the way back to the flat and then makes an enormous fry-up for dinner for all of them. He won’t let Louis touch anything, but he practically glows when Louis chooses to straddle one of the chairs and watch him instead, kicking occasionally at his ankles whenever he passes too close. Louis’s brain feels staticky and he can only muster a few mocking remarks about Harry’s coordination, which in turn only earn a hummed protest, none of the usual Heyyys. Once or twice they make eye contact that lasts too long and Louis thinks about turning over the chair, can see in Harry’s jerky motions that he almost puts the pan down, but Louis flicks his eyes away and complains that it’s taking far too long. His heart is pounding too hard for him to say anything else.

Flatmates’ dinner is eaten in front of a laptop screening of _Game of Thrones,_ which they missed when it aired as all flatmates are required to be present for each episode so as not to accidentally spoil it for the others—Niall—and to Louis the episode seems to take forever. Harry has a death grip on his thigh for the last twenty minutes, and Louis tries in vain to pretend he hasn’t noticed how Harry’s watching him more than he’s watching the show.

At last it’s done and Harry blurts, “Louis, come listen to my new song,” at a speed that for him is practically cartoonish.

Louis gathers up the plates, which he never does, and carries them to the sink, which he also never does. “I don’t know,” he says. “I was thinking about doing the washing up.”

Harry’s face falls and Niall shouts, “Fuck your new song, Harry, it’s the apocalypse!”

“Everyone stay very still,” Liam adds, and Zayn cracks up.

“Just for that, I won’t,” Louis says, pretending to contemplate his fingernails. Harry’s eyes are comically wide.

There’s a chorus of dismay as Louis follows Harry up the stairs. Harry drags him doggedly by the wrist as Louis pauses here and there to note something new about the paint in the hallway. As soon as they’re in Harry’s room, Harry slams the door shut, locks it, and walks with determination over to his laptop, where he starts a recording of his own voice playing at top volume, then stalks back over to Louis, who is leaning against the wall, laughing.

“Are you trying to seduce me with your own music?” Louis asks.

“Does that mean it isn’t working?” Harry asks drily.

Louis is still laughing when Harry covers his mouth with his own, his fingers simultaneously working at Louis’s flies. Louis feels suddenly, unfamiliarly feminine, pushed up against the wall, with Harry clearly trying all of his moves on him, smoothly managing to get him half-undressed with one hand while groping him with the other. He breaks the kiss and breathes for a second.

“All right?” Harry asks, leaning down to press his forehead against Louis’s.

“I—yeah,” Louis says. “Yeah,” shoving Harry toward the bed. Harry falls back onto it heavily, arms over his head, and Louis yanks at the buttons of his plaid shirts. “You’re too dressed,” he complains, making Harry beam again and sit up a little to tug both shirts off over his head at once. When he falls back against the pillow, he’s bare to the waist except for his tangled necklaces and the dark skin of his tattoos.

“I want to suck you off,” Louis says involuntarily, then freezes, expecting Harry to laugh.

Harry doesn’t laugh; he looks at Louis with wide eyes and says, “Okay.”

“It’ll be awful,” Louis warns him, moving back so he’s sitting on Harry’s legs.

“I love awful,” Harry says. “Awful, please.”

Louis snorts a little laugh and tugs Harry’s trousers and pants down between them.

It’s not like he’s not seen Harry’s cock before, the way Harry parades around in the altogether in front of God and country. It’s not like he’s not seen it hard, even. They’re young lads and hard-ons happen the way that weather happens; it doesn’t _mean_ anything, except when they discovered, to everyone’s amusement, that Niall had a thing for spanking while watching that one Juno Temple film. But he’s never seen it this way, right in front of his face, with Harry squirming and biting his lip above him, looking at Louis look at his cock.

Louis carefully slides his hand over it, stroking down once, which makes Harry’s cock jerk in his hand. He glances up and his stomach tightens when he sees Harry’s watching him hungrily. He tries to remember the way other people have done this to him, and he wanks Harry off slowly, licking at the sheer half of Harry’s cock that his hand doesn’t cover. Harry moans and Louis looks up again, is blindsided by the sight of Harry with his mouth fallen open, fingers twisted in the duvet beside him.

Gratified, Louis jerks Harry off a little faster, bending to fit his mouth around the head of his cock. It’s difficult to keep his jaw stretched and suck at the same time, but Harry’s panting above him, and Louis gets bold enough to push his tongue against Harry’s cock as well. Harry gasps, “Shit,” and Louis grins around his cock, pulls off to wank him wetly as he breathes.

When he licks back down onto Harry’s cock his teeth scrape and Harry gives a full-body shudder. “Sorry,” Louis says hurriedly, but Harry shakes his head and mumbles, “ ’s fine, I—like it,” and he makes an odd hiccupy sound the next time his cock glances over Louis’s teeth, and the next second Louis feels the slickness of precome against his mouth, so Harry must not be lying. Louis makes him squirm after that, keeps him groaning long after his stupid recording has run out of time and Harry’s noises are loud in the room, empty except for the two of them on the bed.

Harry’s hand drifts down to Louis’s face halfway through and Louis feels him trace the outline of his own cock in Louis’s mouth. Their eyes meet for the first time and Louis feels like he should look away but he can’t. Harry looks absolutely wrecked, is the thing, his mouth red and shiny and his eyes glassy, half-lidded, watching Louis like he’s the only thing he ever wants to look at. All at once Harry lets his head fall back and his body tightens under Louis. “—gonna—” is all he gets out, and then Louis’s mouth is flooded with hot wetness. He tries to swallow it all but some spills over his bottom lip, and then Harry’s yanking him up, licking the last of his come from Louis’s mouth and kissing him until Louis can’t breathe anymore.

“Harry—” Louis exhales as he falls back onto the bed, but Harry is already knelt over him, shoving Louis’s trousers down. He brings his palm up to his mouth, Louis watching him the whole time, and then he’s jerking Louis off quickly, one-handed, bracing himself over Louis with the other so he can kiss him every few seconds, biting at his throat when Louis can’t help but turn away to gasp into the pillows.

When Louis comes Harry licks it off his fingers. Louis nearly has a seizure watching him. “What the _fuck_ ,” he breathes when Harry’s done, and Harry flops down next to him, leaning in for a sweaty, naked cuddle.

“Was that okay?” Harry asks Louis’s sternum.

“Shouldn’t I be asking that?”

Harry glances up at him, brow furrowing. “What d’you mean? It was brilliant.”

Louis pets at Harry’s hair and stretches a little smugly on the bed. “Of course it was brilliant.”

“Maybe you’ve been practicing,” Harry rumbles against Louis’s chest. “All those late nights with Niall—”

“Fuck off!” Louis pinches one of Harry’s nipples, but Harry only makes a small noise and presses closer against him.

In a few minutes, Harry’s asleep, and Louis is left to watch him breathing damply against Louis’s chest. He doesn’t seem real, even as close as he is. Louis doesn’t know when he falls asleep, too.

 

 

 

The next week is a sleepless blur. When Louis isn’t at work, Harry’s in class, or at band practice, or Louis’s at a gig, and Harry is constantly showing up as Louis is about to leave for work and dragging him back into his bedroom so he can suck him off against the door, or jerk him off in the toilet at Fred’s mum’s house, or (once, horrifyingly) wrap a hand around both of them in the men’s restroom during Louis’s break at the café, getting come on the bottom of Louis’s work shirt so that he spends the rest of his shift with his shirt tucked into his trousers like the kind of goody-two-shoes who wouldn’t have got off to Harry rambling in his ear about how he was going to split him open when they got home.

The thing is, Louis isn’t sure he’s ready for that—he’d said it in the moment, a yes in the sense that he would let Harry do anything to him, but he’s scared of it like he’s scared of everything Harry does to him, so instead he does as many things to Harry as he can think of. Except—every once in a while he gives up, lets Harry kiss him in the slow way Harry kisses, lets Harry jerk him off too dry, lets Harry make him keep his eyes open and fixed on Harry’s the whole time, so that Louis feels split open already.

On Saturday, which is Louis’s day off, Harry wakes him up by blowing him, and then Zayn ruins everything by knocking on the door. Louis freezes. Harry keeps going; if anything, Louis could swear he gets louder, moaning around Louis’s cock.

“Louis?” Zayn calls through the door. “Are you busy?”

“Very fucking busy,” Louis calls back, trying to hold Harry’s head still, which only seems to encourage him. “Fuck you,” Louis hisses to Harry. Harry pulls off Louis’s cock to giggle.

“All right,” Zayn says through the door. “Wanted to know if we’re still going to do that thing we talked about earlier, though.”

Louis yanks at Harry’s hair and pushes his cock back into his mouth. Louis catches his surprised gaze and says under his breath, “If you want to suck it, suck it. You’d better be quiet about it, too,” he adds. Harry barely stops himself from groaning—Louis feels his throat flex around his cock—and he wraps his hand around his own prick as he goes back to sucking Louis’s.

“Louis?” calls Zayn.

“I’ll be there in five, babe,” Louis says at normal volume, watching Harry’s curls bob. He hears Zayn wander back down the hallway.

“If you haven’t made me come in the next three minutes, you can’t either,” Louis tells Harry, who doesn’t manage to stop himself this time and nearly chokes on Louis’s dick as he lets out a noise.

Louis does his best, but he only holds out two minutes before he’s pulling Harry off his cock and coming on his splotchy face. Harry licks around his wet mouth when he’s finished, eyes shut against the strands of come still clinging there, and his hand moves so fast over his own cock that it’s barely seconds before he’s following, dirtying the butterfly on his stomach.

“ _God_ ,” Louis breathes, sliding his fingers through the mess on Harry’s belly.

“Mm?” Harry’s eyes are still closed.

“You did so well, sweetheart,” Louis says, his mouth mostly on autopilot as he stares.

Harry fumbles around the bed until he finds a t-shirt—his or Louis’s, Louis isn’t sure—and rubs it over the mess on his face. He opens his eyes when he’s done and blinks at Louis before launching himself at him, kissing him hard and getting sticky, half-dried come on Louis’s chin.

“Disgusting,” Louis says, only half-joking, pushing Harry away.

Harry flops back onto his heels. “You called me sweetheart.”

“I call you lots of things. Twat,” Louis says, suddenly embarrassed.

Harry only beams at him. The nervous machine starts up in Louis’s throat, making it click as he swallows hard. “Zayn’s probably wondering where you are,” Harry points out after a moment.

“Right,” Louis says, grabbing his clothes.

 

 

 

Rings haven’t exactly gone out of style since the TiMER company started, but they are a bit old-fashioned, less serious-looking than they used to be. Mostly people get matched frames or tattoos around their timers. Zayn is rubbing at the beginnings of his beard in front of the men’s rings, staring down at the glass case. They’re all very colorful, some with chips of ruby or emerald, one rather gaudy version with four different gems crusted on its surface.

“None of these are right,” Louis tells the salesman, who’s looking alternately bored and like he’s wondering how to lure Zayn away from Louis. Louis’s had his hands stuck in his pockets since he got to the store, so he supposes the salesman hasn’t figured out they’re not really together yet. Getting someone to leave their One almost never works, and if it does it’s usually short-lived, but Louis supposes Zayn’s face would make quite a few men attempt the impossible. Still, he’s offended on the grounds that if Louis were actually Zayn’s intended, all this staring would be incredibly rude. “Have you got anything less … this?”

The salesman glances at Louis and then back at Zayn. “We’ve got all the most popular items out front. I suppose I could check in the back for something plainer?”

“Nah,” says Zayn. He grabs Louis’s hand. “Thanks,” he adds to the salesman, pulling Louis out of the store.

“What are you doing?” Louis demands. “We’ve barely looked at what’s in there.”

Zayn lights a cigarette. “I looked at everything,” he says. “Nothing was—it, you know, nothing was right. Not for Liam.”

“Liam will be happy with anything you get him.” Louis can picture Liam’s face, too, that stupid doggy expression. “You could get Li a twist-tie and he’d probably blow you right there.”

“I’m not going to get him a fucking twist-tie, though, am I,” Zayn says. “I’m going to get him the sickest ring ever.” He scowls and takes another drag.

“For fuck’s sake,” Louis says. “You’re such a good boyfriend, it’s weird.” Zayn makes a face at him and Louis adds, “Like sometimes you look well cool, leaning against buildings with cigarettes—” Zayn chuckles—“but if you could, like, have a thought bubble it’d say, _Should I buy roses or day lilies?_ ”

“Day lilies, innit,” Zayn says, dropping his cigarette and stepping on it. “They look like Liam when he’s smiling.”

“That was the worst thing I’ve ever heard anyone say,” Louis exclaims, shoving him as they turn the corner down a side street. Zayn stumbles toward a storefront window, laughing. “I don’t even know if I can—”

But Zayn’s caught himself against the glass and now he’s staring with his face almost pressed up against it.

“Is it comics?” Louis asks, coming up behind him. “What’ve you found?”

“Lou,” Zayn breathes, not looking away.

Louis sees it at once. It’s a pair of rings, identical, both a dark, burnished gold, plain except for the thin black lines girdling each edge.

“You’ve got to get them,” Louis says, just as Zayn is saying, “I feel like my timer should be going off again,” rubbing at his wrist.

It’s even more so in the store, which is a secondhand shop that just got the rings in that day. When Zayn tries one on, it fits him perfectly, and Louis has no doubt that the other one will fit Liam just as well. Zayn explains he’s one of them that timed out young, and that he can’t wait to spend the rest of his life with Liam, and the shopkeeper is so moved he gives Zayn the rings for free. Louis practically has to drag Zayn out of the shop as he thanks the shopkeeper endlessly.

In the street Zayn gets the rings out of the little bag the shopkeeper put them in and slips his on, stares at it madly. Louis keeps him from getting run over and makes fun of him a bit, but his heart isn’t in it. He’s staring too.

 

 

 

Louis sleepwalks through his audition that afternoon, his mind on the rings warm in the pocket of his jeans, where Liam won’t find them. On the tube home he accidentally makes eye contact with half a dozen strangers caught in his spaced-out gaze. He tries to keep his eyes on the ground after that, one hand covering his wrist, his leg jiggling impatiently.

When he gets back to the flat, he finds Harry sat on the floor with Niall and Liam, eating pizza out of a box and playing FIFA like they’re still seventeen. Louis grabs Harry by the back of his t-shirt and says, “Right, you’re coming with me,” and pulls until Harry’s upright and struggling to walk backwards out of the room with Louis. Liam cheers as Harry inadvertently forfeits and Niall just gives Louis an eerie pixie look of understanding.

“What’s this about?” Harry laughs as Louis pulls him up the stairs to his room. Louis doesn’t answer, just yanks until they’re on the other side of his bedroom door and he can slam it shut behind them, push Harry up against it and kiss him hard.

It’s minutes before he pulls away again, and when he does, Harry’s eyes are wide, a little glassy. “Louis…” he says, in his low voice. “Lou,” he adds a minute later, when Louis is sucking a mark into his neck.

“What,” Louis mumbles, trying to pull Harry’s shirt off and push him toward the bed at the same time.

Harry stops dead in the middle of the room, his shirt rucked up around his neck. “Can you fuck me,” he says, looking shaky.

Louis is shaken, too, though he tries not to show it. He nods quickly, pulling his own shirt off, and Harry nods to himself, as if confirming Louis’s answer.

In a moment he’s spread out naked in Louis’s bed beneath him and Louis is bending over him, unsure. “Do you have…?” Harry asks.

“Yeah,” Louis says. He pulls the bottle of slick out from his dresser drawer, and then he just holds it, just sits on his heels over Harry looking at him.

“Louis?” Harry says. He’s frowning. The evening sun stripes through the blinds and across Harry’s face. His throat moves as he swallows.

“Yeah,” Louis says. He ducks down and mouths at Harry’s cock briefly, letting his teeth scrape a bit to hear Harry make that near-scandalized hiccup again, and then he gets his fingers wet and presses one to Harry’s arsehole.

“Fuuuuck,” Harry breathes. His arms drift up the bed until they’re resting above his head on the pillow and his back arches a bit as Louis pushes inside. Louis can see the tattoo on his wrist, and then he can’t look away from the spectacle of his own fingers sliding into Harry over and over as Harry jerks and shudders on the bed.

At last Harry says, rough, “That’s enough,” and Louis pulls his fingers out too fast, making Harry keen a little. Louis turns away to get a condom from the drawer and tear it open with his teeth. When he turns back Harry’s got his fingers in himself, and Louis watches, transfixed, until Harry opens his eyes and says, “Hurry up, please.”

The feeling of pushing into Harry’s body is at once familiar and unfamiliar. A few months ago, if Louis had thought much about sex with men he would have imagined it a little boring, maybe, bodies too similar, lacking the eternal unknowability that makes sex with women so thrilling and frightening. Not that anything with Harry could ever be boring, but Louis expected to know him implicitly, maybe in the same way he could find his own body in the dark without trying. It’s not so in real life, and Louis doesn’t know whether to be grateful or frustrated that as he watches his own cock disappearing into Harry’s body he can’t know what it feels like for Harry, that he can be so close and yet run up against the barrier of Harry’s skin, inside and outside, which clings to Louis and still tells him nothing. Harry’s eyes are shut tight and his mouth falls open; as Louis pushes in further his breath cuts off abruptly, pushed out of him, and he drags air back in in an effortful gasp.

Louis wants him to open his eyes. He gets right up next to Harry’s face and presses his forehead to Harry’s. Harry tilts his mouth up for a kiss, but Louis pulls back just enough to escape it and there—Harry’s eyes open, his eyebrows drawing together.

“All right, love?” Louis asks quietly.

Harry nods, then lets out a shocked noise as Louis pulls back and shoves into him. He’s so hot around Louis, better than anything. Louis is barely keeping it together. He pushes slowly into Harry, rocking back and forth until Harry is shifting underneath him, canting his hips up to meet Louis’s. His face is serious, focused like he’s concentrating hard on Louis’s cock in him.

Louis moves faster then, pressing his hands over Harry’s wrists on the bed and fucking into him harder, watching Harry’s face as it clears, his back arching. “Fuck,” Harry breathes.

Louis lets his eyes fall away from Harry’s face for the first time in minutes, lets himself look over Harry’s body like he’s wanted to, the long bewildering expanse of it underneath him. He knows all of Harry’s tattoos but the way his muscles move beneath them when he’s getting fucked is new to Louis. I’ve got my dick in Harry, Louis thinks. He waits for it to really hit him, but it just makes him want to fuck Harry harder, so he’ll remember, so he’ll be sore later and think _Louis._

“Louis,” Harry mumbles, as if on command, and Louis snaps his eyes back to Harry’s, wide and green. Every time Louis fucks into him Harry lets out another _ha,_ like he can’t believe it’s happening. Harry’s sweating and one of his curls is stuck to his pink cheek. Louis—briefly, inexplicably—thinks of Zayn’s rings, trapped in the pocket of his trousers, crumpled on the floor.

“Louis, can I—ah!” Harry gets out.

“What, love?” The bed is creaking. Louis leans down to bite Harry’s lip. Harry breathes hotly into his face when Louis is finished, a line between his eyebrows.

“Can I—touch myself,” Harry says at last. His wrists are still pinned above his head.

Louis slows, looks at the long stretch of Harry’s body beneath him. “Not yet,” he tells him.

Harry keens when Louis pulls almost out of him, then pushes back in, as slowly as he can manage. Louis is sure they can hear them downstairs now, but he doesn’t care. Gently, he lets go of Harry’s wrists. There are reddened marks on each where he’s pressed down, darkening the skin behind his tattoo. Harry doesn’t move his hands from above his head, not even when Louis yanks his long legs up and over his shoulders, bending him in half. He goes easily, his eyes never leaving Louis’s face.

Finally Louis says, “Sweetheart,” and Harry pulls himself off in seconds, his face slack with relief as he comes all over his belly. He’s like a vise around Louis and when he says, “You too,” pulling him close, mumbling, “please,” in Louis’s ear, Louis can’t help it, buries his face in Harry’s sweaty neck and comes shaking.

When he opens his eyes he sees Harry looking at his body, at the tattoo over his collarbones (“it is what it is,” the second thing people ever notice about him), the slight curve of his belly, the stark white interruption of the timer on his wrist, his soft cock half-hidden by the tangled sheet. Louis feels self-conscious in a way he hasn’t felt around Harry before. He coughs just as Harry says, “I want—”

“What?”

Harry shakes his head, pushing his curls off his forehead. “Nothing,” he says, and presses wet smacking kisses to Louis’s shoulder, his stomach, his hand. “Thank you for fucking me,” he adds, raising his head.

“Not a hardship,” Louis says.

Harry grins at him.

 

 

 

 _You can fuck me anytime you want, you know,_ and Harry wasn’t kidding. Louis skives off one of his shifts at the café and makes Liam cover another one and Harry skips half his classes for the week because Louis tells him to and they spend most of the week in bed, Louis taking Harry apart again and again, and the thing is, Harry never says wait or no or stop, he just keeps looking at Louis the way he had in the alley and on Louis’s birthday and when they met that first time, clear-eyed, ready, waiting. Harry’s mouth gets swollen and cracked with all the kissing they do. Louis has bite marks down the inside of one arm.

On Friday Zayn invites them to his mum’s house. It’s ostensibly a timer party for one of his sisters, sold to the rest of them (Liam in particular) as free food for home-starved uni students (plus Louis) but Liam is happy anyway, looking forward to seeing Zayn’s family.

“I practically lived with them for like, all of senior year,” Liam says in the car on the way to Zayn’s mum’s house Friday afternoon. He’s clutching a box of chocolates and jiggling his leg. “I hope these’ll be good,” he adds, giving the box a little shake.

Louis could kiss him. “They’re perfect, Leem,” he says instead, resting his chin on Liam’s shoulder and meeting Zayn’s eyes behind Liam’s back.

They let Harry drive, partly because they have a rule about passenger getting to choose the music which saves them from three hours of Miley Cyrus and partly because Zayn is acting thoroughly unlike himself. He’s not bricking it—totally the opposite, which possibly freaks Louis out more. Zayn’s upbeat, giddy, energized like he’s been possessed by the spirit of Niall for the afternoon. He’s practically hanging his head out of the car window.

The Malik house is at the end of the block, identifiable by Zayn’s youngest sister’s chalk drawings on the walkway. Liam absently threads his fingers in Zayn’s as they make their way to the door, and Louis sees Zayn squeeze back. Niall jumps on Harry’s back as soon as they’re out of the car and rides him to the front steps.

Zayn’s sister answers the door, and Liam immediately says, “Hey! Congratulations on getting your—” He stumbles as she holds up her wrist, grinning. She’s already got a timer. “Are we late?” Liam asks, blinking.

Zayn is shifting from one foot to the other, smiling his face off. “Let’s go inside,” he says.

In the front room, there’s a small crowd of Zayn’s family and their friends. Someone’s hung up streamers and Zayn’s mum is clasping her hands.

Liam still looks confused. Zayn bumps Liam’s shoulder with his own, still grinning like mad. “Liam,” he says, and then clears his throat. “Uh. Right.” He gets down on one knee. “Liam,” he says, and this time Liam’s got it, his eyebrows are practically clearing his forehead. “Liam,” Zayn says again. “I—well, I love you. Everyone loves you,” he says, glancing around. “And I want to be with you for the rest of my life. So, uh. Will you marry me?”

Liam has tears running down his face. He looks around at the Maliks, and their friends, and at Harry and Niall and Louis, and then, again, at Zayn. “Yeh—” he says, cough-laughing, “yes,” and Zayn leaps up and grabs him, spins him around in a stupid hug, and then they’re kissing as everyone cheers.

“Oh,” Liam says, wiping his face with his sleeve and pulling away, “I’m sorry! This is for you,” he says, and thrusts the box of chocolates at Zayn’s mum. Everyone laughs.

“Lou?” Zayn asks at last, and Louis steps forward. He’s not crying, because he doesn’t cry except sometimes when he’s very drunk, but he could if he wanted to. He digs the ring box out of the pocket of his trousers.

“You got a box for it?” Zayn asks delightedly, and pulls Louis in for a bone-crushing hug. “Sick. Wait, should I get down on one knee again?”

“I don’t think that’s—necessary,” says Liam. “Is that a ring?”

“Well, now you’ve gone and spoiled the surprise,” Louis tells him.

It doesn’t stop Liam from crying again when Zayn shows him the ring, or from insisting that Zayn put his on, too, when Louis brings out the second box. They lace their fingers together, and Liam’s smile when he sees their rings next to each other could light a bloody stadium.

 

 

 

They get home late that night, Louis driving this time, Harry sleepily happy in the passenger seat, with Zayn and Liam and Niall collapsed dozing in the back. Louis keeps his eyes fixed steadily on the road in front of him, the bright lights of passing cars edging his vision, the pattern of their comings and goings unreadable.

Liam lifts his head when they reach the flat and nudges Zayn awake with some difficulty while Harry carries a sleeping Niall bridal-style to his room. Louis slips off his shoes and goes upstairs, bare feet padding, knowing Harry will follow. He doesn’t bother closing the door behind him, just pulls off his shirt and trousers, waiting, browsing through Harry’s disorganized record collection. Harry doesn’t have a record player, so Louis likes to think of it as a visual reflection of his pretension.

He hears Harry approaching before he feels his presence in the doorway. “Niall drooled a bit, d’you want to see the photo,” Harry asks, adding, “—Hands off those.”

“Why? Are you afraid I’ll give them to someone with a record player who can appreciate them?” Louis asks, but goes over to sit on Harry’s bed anyway. It’s still dark in Harry’s room except for the faint light of the streetlights through the window. His heart is pounding like a rabbit’s.

Harry throws himself on the bed on top of Louis, crushing the breath out of him. “Huh,” Louis says.

“You’re so small,” Harry says, his breath in Louis’s nose.

“I’m practically your height,” Louis gets out.

Harry covers one of Louis’s hands with his own and holds it up, raising an eyebrow.

“Your unsophisticatedly large hands prove nothing,” Louis says. “Except that you’re disproportionate and I basically embody the golden ratio.”

“36-24-36,” Harry says, grinning his toddler grin and wedging his free hand between them to grab at Louis’s arse.

“You’re so uncool,” Louis says, pinching his nipple. “Anyway, I’m much taller than five-three. Fuck off.”

“Not gonna,” Harry mumbles, tucking his face into Louis’s neck.

“No,” Louis says, trying to push him off, “wake up. I want you to—”

“What,” Harry says, muffled, not budging.

Louis gives up and yanks at Harry’s curls, pulling until he brings Harry’s mouth to his. “Mm,” Harry hums against his lips, but that’s not what Louis wants, and he kisses harder, bites at Harry’s sore bottom lip until he shudders, grinds up against Harry’s belly. “Fuck,” Harry says at last, yanking at Louis’s pants and then at his own clothes. Louis bites at his neck, his shoulder. When they’re free of clothes Harry slots his cock up next to Louis’s and pulls them both off at once, slick with lube, and Louis’s mouth is dry when he says, “Fuck me.”

Harry’s hand slows between them and Louis can see the shift of his frown. “Lou,” Harry says.

Louis doesn’t know what that means. “Please,” he adds, for good measure.

There’s a long pause with the heavy sound of Harry’s breathing between them. “Okay,” he says at last. “Okay, fuck. Fuck. Turn over,” he adds, and Louis hurries to shift between the bracket of Harry’s legs. Harry falls over him as soon as he’s finished, mouthing at Louis’s neck, pressing kisses between his shoulderblades. It feels like he’s everywhere, and Louis’s calves are shaking. Harry yanks at his hips until he’s arched up and Louis’s face burns.

“You’re so fucking—” Harry says from somewhere above him.

“Are you going to stare all night,” Louis demands, casting about blindly for wherever Harry dropped the slick from before, and then Harry’s mouth is on him, hot and wet, and Louis’s whole body tenses. “Shit,” he breathes, and he feels Harry’s tongue flick against his arse, Harry’s hands on his ankles, keeping his legs spread wide. The trembling ache in Louis’s legs shudders up his whole body and he’s shaking, gasping as Harry keeps at it, like nothing he’s ever felt before. “H—arry,” he chokes, after a minute, and Harry hmms into his arse, keeping his grip on Louis’s ankles tight as Louis arches and quakes. In a moment Harry’s slicked-up fingers are pushing into him, spreading him open, and Louis muffles his noise in the pillow as Harry fucks him on his fingers, slow.

“Say it again,” Harry says suddenly, pulling back and pressing his cheek to Louis’s hip. His voice is rough.

“Say what,” Louis gasps.

Harry’s weight shifts on the bed and Louis hears him tearing a condom packet, the slick sound of his hand on his prick. Louis feels hands on his hips and Harry’s cock pressed to his arse. He tries to shove back, make Harry move, but Harry’s grip on him is too strong. “For fuck’s sake,” he snaps at last.

“Say it,” Harry says, face unreadable in the low light.

Louis can hear his own pulse in his ears. “Fuck me,” he says finally, and then loses his breath as Harry pushes into him.

The stretch is unbelievable. Louis feels like he’s breaking apart as Harry pushes further. He lets out a whine and Harry stops immediately, pulls back, and Louis gasps, “No, please—” until Harry’s back inside him, the unrelenting press of it blurring Louis’s vision.

“Louis,” Harry breathes when he’s all the way inside. He sounds totally overwhelmed. Louis wants to look at him but he can’t, takes long, measured breaths, staring at the dim expanse of Harry’s bedroom wall in front of him.

“Go on,” he says at last, and Harry groans as he pulls back and Louis grits his teeth. When he pushes back in Louis can tell he’s trying to be gentle and it makes his face heat up, ashamed. “Come on,” he says, shoving his arse back against Harry, and Harry drops down, the hot weight of his whole body against Louis’s back, and fucks him harder, wedging a hand between them so he can pull Louis off as he does it.

All at once the heavy drag of Harry’s cock in him gives way to a lit-up heat and Louis can’t help but let out a noise. He forgets his terror, for a minute, his whole body buzzing as Harry gives it to him harder, his mouth falling open as Harry mumbles nonsense in his ear, sweaty against his cheek.

“—want to fuck you forever,” Louis hears as Harry’s pulling him off savagely against the sheets. He moans, twisting under Harry and Harry says, “I fucking, I can’t—” and pulls out, leaving Louis shocked and empty.

“What the fuck,” Louis says, his voice breaking humiliatingly.

“Sorry,” Harry says, “I just—” and he yanks Louis up until Louis is straddling his lap in the middle of the bed, both of their faces lit up by the streetlamps. “I just wanted to see you,” he says, breathless.

“Wanker,” Louis breathes, and then Harry’s cock is pressing into him again, slicker this time, sliding easily. It’s worse this way, watching Harry’s eyes hungry on him as he rocks back against his prick. “Wanker,” he says again, just to have something to say, and Harry bites his lip, sliding his hands down to Louis’s arse, fingers digging in as he lifts Louis’s hips and pushes him down again, fucking up into him.

“Want you,” Harry says nonsensically as Louis’s gasping again. Louis lets his eyes fall closed when Harry thrusts up again, knocking the breath out of him in a whimper. “Want to fuck you,” Harry says on another laconic thrust, and Louis thinks, _You’re fucking me right now, you idiot,_ but he can’t speak, so he just tips forward to catch Harry’s mouth in a ragged kiss.

“More,” he says when he can talk again, and Harry hisses out a breath through his teeth.

“Give me a minute,” Harry says.

“No,” Louis says, lifting himself up on Harry’s cock and sinking back down. It drags at his insides, burning him up. He does it again.

Harry groans and grips Louis’s arse so hard Louis is sure he’s leaving marks. “I can’t—I’m gonna—”

Louis kisses him again, bites his lip. “Fuck me,” he says again, but it’s begging this time, and Harry whines into his mouth and does as he’s told, fucking up into Louis desperately, until Louis feels like he’s going to split apart. He pulls himself off then, frantic, mouth so close to Harry’s that he thinks it’s likely that neither of them are getting any air at all. Harry’s gasping, arms locked around Louis’s body, necklaces jangling on his chest. “Shit,” Louis breathes, his lower lip catching Harry’s upper lip as he says it.

Harry’s eyes are colorless in the low light, locked desperately on Louis’s as he wraps his hand around Louis, pulling him off even as he fucks him, and then Louis is coming, vision whiting out as he hears Harry choke out, “love you,” in his ear as he pushes up one last time, the long familiar groan, and that’s—

Harry’s back sags and he lets his forehead fall onto Louis’s shoulder, panting. Louis squirms and Harry tightens his arms around him, keeping him on his softening cock for a last few seconds before he pulls out slowly, tossing the condom in the wastebasket.

Louis lowers himself down into the bed, gingerly, as Harry wraps himself around him, sweaty and too hot, nosing into the place behind Louis’s ear. The room is warm and quiet around them, no cars passing outside, and Louis tries to even his breathing. He doesn’t know how long it is before Harry says, sounding unusually serious, “’s true.”

Louis’s breath hitches, and for a long second his mind is wide open to what he hasn’t let himself think before. He stares into the dark room and waits, anyway, and after a while he can feel Harry slip into unconsciousness at his back.

Louis is gone before morning.

 

 

 

When she sees him on the doorstep, clutching his bags and wearing a too-big pair of Harry’s sweatpants, Jay only says, “Come in, sweet,” and holds the door open for him, and Louis is dizzy with gratitude.

 

 

 

Louis sleeps for a stupidly long time in his childhood bedroom, with his mother or Fizzy interrupting occasionally to bring him cups of tea or a plate of toast. Daisy wakes him up once to ask what’s wrong with him, and Louis doesn’t know what to say, so he says he’s fine.

“Is it because you haven’t found your One yet?” she asks, pointing to his blank wrist.

“No,” Louis says, and then he tickles her viciously until she leaves, and then he goes back to sleep.

On the third day Louis gets up and goes to do the washing-up while everyone else is still in bed. It’s his secret that he’s actually very helpfully domestic when he’s at home, except for how he never cleaned his own room once and never will yet.

Lottie comes into the room an hour later as he’s folding clothes. “You’re up,” she observes. “We thought you might’ve died in there.” She wrinkles her nose. “Smelled like it, anyway.”

“I think you’ve caught a whiff of your own morning breath, sweetheart,” Louis says mildly. “I’m fresh as a daisy. Want to help me out here?”

“No,” Lottie says, putting the kettle on.

Louis hides his smile. “Where are all the rest of you?” he asks. “Don’t you have school today?” He frowns. “Is it a bank holiday?”

“Don’t be a wanker,” Lottie says. “It’s Mum’s—you know. We’re all staying home.”

“Fuck,” Louis says. “Shit. Don’t—pretend I didn’t say that.”

“Yeah,” Lottie says. “We thought you were going to sleep through it.”

“What’s she going to do?” Louis asks.

Lottie shrugs. “Stay in, I suppose. She and Dad have been having these long conversations all week. She doesn’t want to see the guy.” Her voice falters. “I don’t want to meet him, either.”

“Lott,” Louis says, going to her and putting his arms around her. “Fuck. I’m really sorry.”

Lottie’s eyes fill up with tears. “Maybe it’ll be a long time before they ever, you know, get together. And Dad will stay.”

“He will,” Louis says into the top of her head. “Don’t worry about it, love.”

 

 

 

It feels like some kind of massive sick day, Jay and Mark locked in the bedroom upstairs and Louis taking care of the girls. They make tomato soup and sandwiches, and Louis lets the twins watch _Ratatouille_ twice even though Louis thinks it’s by far the worst of the Pixar movies, and plays a round of blackjack with Fizzy, which he’s pleased she still remembers from his last visit home.

Halfway through the afternoon, Louis carries a plate of sandwiches and two cups of tea upstairs, carefully knocking on the door before edging it open. Jay and Mark are sitting on the edge of the bed, Jay clutching Mark’s fingers tightly.

“Oh,” she says when Louis enters the room with his tray. “Thank you, love,” she adds, sounding a bit spacey as Louis sets it on the bedside table.

“Thanks, Louis,” Mark adds. He’s been crying. Louis has never seen him cry before.

“Sure. Sorry,” he adds, shutting the door behind him, feeling totally helpless.

He’d never thought of Mark as something truly permanent before—thought of him more as a stopover to the end of the countdown, a nice guy, good with kids, a pleasant arrangement until the real thing came along, and it’s only now that it occurs to him that the real thing could be right here, has been here all along. Mark’s more of his dad than anyone else has been.

There’s a scream from downstairs, and Louis practically falls down the steps in his rush to get to the kitchen.

The girls are gathered around the stove, which has caught fire. The twins are crying, and Lottie is trying to fill a plastic tub with water.

“Fuck!” Louis can’t get near the burner to turn it off.

“My book!” Daisy cries, and Lottie throws the water over the stove, which bursts into steam. It’s too late; the wallpaper is aflame now as well, licking up toward the cabinets.

Jay and Mark burst into the kitchen, and Jay lets out a little screech and herds the twins away from the stove. “Lottie, get away from there as well,” she snaps. “Louis, call for help.”

Louis snatches Lottie’s phone off the table and dials as the fire grows higher.

 

 

 

They’re standing outside on the lawn when the firemen arrive, barreling past them into the kitchen, which has filled with smoke. Louis hates the sight of the tubes leading into his home, their stupid booted feet tracking dirt in. He feels so guilty he could vomit.

“I’m sorry,” Daisy says into his shirt. “I didn’t know the book would catch fire.”

“No, no, love,” Louis says, crouching down to her. “It’s my fault, I’m so sorry, I left the burner on, it’s all my fault.” She cries into his sleeve and Louis strokes her back, wretched.

“It’s not too bad,” one of the firemen says, striding back out onto the lawn, and there’s a dull chime that everyone hears—Louis, Mark, the girls, the neighbors who’ve come out to gawk.

Jay, who clutches her wrist and says, “Fuck off.”

“I’m sorry—ma’am,” he says, looking wildly between Jay and his own timer, backing toward the truck. He’s good-looking, Louis notes dispassionately, with a big square jaw and kind blue eyes. The sort of bloke you might leave your husband for.

“Fuck off,” she repeats, and then she turns her face into Mark’s chest.

“I want to kill him,” Lottie says in Louis’s ear, and then Louis really does cry, because he knows what he has to do.

 

 

 

He hugged Jay for a long time before he left, squeezing her until he thought he was too close to breaking her ribs. “You’re a really good mum,” he said when he was through, and then she was crying, too. “I’m really sorry for leaving the burner on,” he’d added, swallowing.

“It was going to happen no matter what you did,” she told him.

He’s standing on the steps of the flat, working himself up to go inside, when the door slams open and Harry’s there, hair wet and hanging in his face, turning the shoulders of his white shirt translucent. He’s taller than he is in Louis’s memory, or maybe it’s only because he’s a step above, but he’s squinting in the sun and Louis can barely handle it.

“Fuck,” Harry says, stumbling backward. “Why are you here?”

“I—” Louis doesn’t know how to explain.

“You’re not supposed to be here yet,” Harry practically shouts at him, and that’s when Louis catches sight of the timer on Harry’s wrist, stamped inelegantly over _I CAN’T CHANGE._

“What the fuck is that,” Louis breathes, stepping into the flat and dropping his bags.

Harry covers it with his other hand, possessively. “I got one,” he says unnecessarily.

“Why?” Louis spits, and grabs for Harry’s arm, but Harry pulls it behind his back. Louis crowds him up against the wall, twists his arm around until he can see it.

It’s got three days, thirty-five minutes, and eight seconds left on it. Seven. Louis watches them tick down, feeling numb all over. He remembers a long night spent after a year of being a wristwatcher, getting pissed and curling up by the toilet, alternating between gripping his arm so tightly he left bruises and dry-retching, willing his timer to start counting down, right then, no, right _then,_ no, _right then._ For hours.

He thinks: Harry has never wanted something he didn’t get.

Louis tastes blood, and that’s when he realizes he’s biting the inside of his mouth too hard, and holding Harry’s wrist too hard. Harry is crying, his eyes pink and wet. Louis lets go of his arm and leans heavily against the banister.

“I wanted it to be you,” Harry says thickly, through his tears, meeting Louis’s eyes.

“Yeah,” Louis says, and it floods through him at last. It should have been me, he thinks, so angry his hands are shaking. He looks at Harry, his wet pretty face, his broad shoulders, dumb necklaces, the way he’s still looking at Louis, the way he always looks at Louis. It belongs to Louis, all of it. Harry belongs to Louis. “I wanted it to be me, too,” he says quietly.

“I love you,” Harry blurts. He stumbles over to Louis, and his hands are wet on Louis’s face.

“You too,” Louis says. “I mean—me too, I love—I love—” His shoulders shake.

Harry nods seriously, still gripping Louis’s face. When he kisses him, Louis tastes salt.

“I was going to get mine—taken off,” Louis whispers when Harry’s pulled back, wiping at his nose. “That’s what I came back to tell you.”

“Okay,” Harry says. “Okay, let’s do that. I’ll do it, too.”

Louis stares at him. “You’re about to time out,” he says. “You’ve got three days.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Harry says. “I’ve always thought they were useless.”

“Harry,” Louis says. “Someone’s been like me, waiting forever, and now they’ve finally got you, waiting for them, and you’re going to hurt them, really badly, if you do that.” He doesn’t care, he’s begging, he wants them to die in a terrible accident, because Harry’s his and there’s a stranger somewhere, thinking he’s theirs, when they've got no idea what it is to have Harry, what it means.

“I don’t care about them,” Harry snaps. “I don’t care about anyone except you. I want—you,” he says, voice breaking. “I want this. I’m not scared. Are you?”

“Terrified,” Louis says, but there’s a smile breaking over his face and he can’t stop it. There’s one on Harry’s face, too. “I’m really fucking scared, Haz,” he adds, grinning, now, like a madman, and Harry grabs his hand and they walk out into the sun.

 

 

 

Harry never lets go of his hand, not once, not even when they’re in the TiMER store and the installation assistant says, “Well, it’s just—I’ll have to get my manager, I’ve never done a removal before,” and Harry snaps, “Get him then,” at her, and squeezes Louis’s hand tighter.

The installation room is gray and dull, with a crinkly sort of doctor’s chair and a sink in the corner and a painting of a boat on a chilly gray lake hung up on one wall. Louis thinks about Harry in here, alone, how he’d imagined seeing Louis again, the chime in his mind when their timers went off.

Harry’s sat beside him, clutching Louis’s fingers tightly, rubbing his thumb along his lip like he can’t stop. His eyes are far-off. “I love you,” he says, suddenly.

“I love you, too,” Louis whispers.

The door thumps open and a small fat man comes in, holding what looks like a much smaller version of the installation kit, with three of the installation assistants trailing behind him. They stand awkwardly around Harry and Louis on the chair.

“Well, boys,” the manager says, looking owlish, “I have to say, I’m very sad to see you in here. We do find that most people are extremely satisfied with their timers. I want to know that you’ve carefully considered this decision. Do you mind if I ask why—?”

“Yes,” Louis says, fixing him with a rude stare.

“Well,” the manager says. “I suppose—well, yes, it’s likely very personal.” He pulls up a chair next to Louis and clears his throat. “I’ve brought a few of the assistants in to observe, if you’re not opposed—it’s very rare they get to see a removal!”

“Quite eager to learn, sir,” one puts in, folding her hands in front of her.

“You should know that once you remove your timer, you may not install another timer,” the manager says. “Not ever.” His gaze flickers between Louis and Harry.

Louis swallows and holds out his wrist.

He feels Harry squeeze his palm.

“All right, then,” the manager says, sighing and patting his thighs. “Well, you’ll feel a slight pinch. Assistants, please be sure to position the device with the line here just under the edge of the product—”

Louis feels it before he hears it, a little vibration on his wrist. Three little chimes, one-two-three.

Everyone freezes.

Louis slowly draws his wrist up to his face. “I’ve gone off,” he says, hearing himself as if from very far away.

“Well,” says the manager, at a loss.

Louis realizes Harry’s dropped his hand.

Harry’s staring at him. His lip is red, peeling where he’s pulled at it, and Louis sees him swallow hard. “How long?” he asks, throat raw.

Louis doesn’t know how to answer. Harry grabs Louis’s wrist and holds it up to his face. “Three and a half years,” he says, letting it go.

No one says anything. One of the assistants coughs.

“You’re going to keep it, aren’t you,” Harry says, voice flat.

Louis wants to tell him he hasn’t decided yet.

He wants to tell him Harry doesn’t know what it’s like to need a future and not have one for so long.

He wants to tell him he’s in love with him, and he’ll do anything.

But he wraps his fingers carefully around his wrist, instead, because it’s like it’s happening to someone else, and he’s too late in answering when Harry gets up and leaves.

 

 

 

Louis finds Harry on the steps of their flat.

He sits down beside him, cautiously, and holds out his wrist. “I’m sorry,” he says, letting the timer there tick away under Harry’s gaze.

“Don’t be,” Harry says after a while.

“I’ve never felt like this about anyone,” Louis says, stumbling over the words. He puts his head between his knees and stares at the concrete step.

After a minute, Harry’s hand covers Louis’s. “Neither have I,” Louis hears him say.

A fire truck goes past, blaring its siren, and Louis hates it. His wrist goes on ticking, and Louis hates it, imagines the someone out there who got a timer today, after years of keeping Louis waiting, foolish, imagines the someone waiting to see Harry in a crowd in three days, and is consumed all at once with a fierce sense of possession. Harry might fall in love with a stranger and Louis might be destined to forgive someone, forgive them again, get old with them and die with them, but they won’t ever have this, not ever. They’ll never have sat exactly here, on exactly this stoop, and they’ll never quite understand what it was to him to hold Harry’s hand and not let go for anything. This part is his and Harry’s, and only theirs, and no one can ever take it away.

It’s almost dark outside when Niall comes out with a jumper on and squats down beside Louis, throwing his arm around him. Louis leans against Niall, and he isn’t surprised when Zayn and Liam find them a few minutes later, until they’re all crowded together on the steps.

“Nice night,” Liam says, and everyone agrees, and then nobody speaks for a while, and that’s fine.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! The mix is here if you're interested: 
> 
> https://8tracks.com/trepan/apples-grow-too-in-my-garden

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! The mix is here if you're interested: 8tracks.com/trepan/apples-grow-too-in-my-garden
> 
> I wrote an epilogue for this, but wasn't satisfied with it, so I took it down. In my head, what happens after this is: Louis never becomes an actor. Intermission makes it big and he becomes something of their manager. Harry's band makes it big as well -- bigger, probably. Zayn and Liam live happily ever after and have a hella cute daughter. Niall zeroes out with Cheryl Cole. (Just kidding.) They never forget.


End file.
